"That's..." started Szandor, unprepared for their clients to have brought masks and wondering if they had misjudged them or the purpose of the job. "Good, I guess." He put the cheap masks back into their van.
Szandor handed Dane and Abby both flashlights and LED lights that could be clipped to their jackets or shirts. "The LED light won't shine far, but they'll give you some ambient light," said Mikkel. "Then you can see yourself and we can see you. The flashlights are for distance. But you'll soon find a flashlight beam is smaller than you thought. That's when you'll be glad for the LEDs - the darkness is just a little less oppressive when you can at least see the back of your hand."
"Trust me," said Szandor, "it's probably darker down there than you think. Most people aren't used to underground darkness. But we got your back."
"Once we're down there, I'll lead and Szandor will bring up the rear," said Mikkel. "But it's going to be dangerous down there. We need your cooperation. If we say stop, you stop. If I say run like hell, you need to run like hell. We may not have the luxury of explaining."
"That sounds extremely familiar," said Abby, looking at Dane. "Do you guys have the same playbook?"
"Possibly!" said Dane. "But when we run, the danger is usually so obvious I don't need to explain!"
"And sometimes it's even not your fault!" said Abby with amusement.
"Mikkel," said Szandor in a low voice. "Who the hell are these two?"
The descent started simply. They climbed down an iron run ladder into the tunnels of New Avalon. These were thankfully not the sewer tunnels, as Dane had originally thought. These were train access tunnels and drainage maintenance tunnels. However, while they were free from the horrible smells of the sewers, the group still had to wear gas masks at times due to the particles in the air from fallen walls. Mikkel and Szandor had not been this way since they had first taken the picture of the armor, but they noted enthusiastically that it appeared none of the walls along the route had collapsed.
The darkness was indeed strange for Dane and Abby. Dane weathered it better than her, but even he was used to far more lighting on his few underground adventures, generally from robots, the floodlights on a vehicle, or magic. He had never walked through such darkness. Abby was more rattled by the impenetrable darkness and the amplification of all sound: every scurrying rat, every tumbling stone, ever wailing train in far off tunnels.
Her nerves were distracted by Szandor, who kept flirting with her, and Dane, who wouldn't stop talking due to caffeine. While she appreciated how those kept her mind off the darkness, she was sick of Dane's stream of consciousness talking and she wasn't interested in the younger monster hunter. She had a boyfriend already, but she stopped short of actually saying that - she shouldn't need to have to resort to that to get a man to stop being interested. She was a little frustrated Szandor didn't get the message despite the cold shoulder she was giving him.
They walked for an hour until they were close to their destination. The tunnels were musty, smelling more of dust and mold than anything. It was silent except for their own sounds. This had been a hotbed of activity when the Nowaks had been here before. Now it sounded safe, but Mikkel hung back with them while Szandor put on his night vision goggles and scouted ahead. There were a few minutes where the others waited, standing awkwardly, trying not to peer too deeply into the darkness or let their nerves get to them. As soon as Szandor left Dane had tried starting conversation, but Mikkel quieted him.
There was a scrape of foot on stone. They tensed and then heard footsteps approaching. They still had on their LEDs, so they were obviously visible to anything beyond the limits of their lights. If they turned off their LEDs, they'd be better concealed, but none of them wanted to stand in the dark. Their flashlights were off so they wouldn't advertise their presence anymore. Because of that, as the footsteps got closer, they didn't have any way to identify the person or persons until they were very close. Mikkel readied his katana and the other two stepped behind him. After a tense moment, they were all relieved when Szandor came back into the light. He scratched the back of his head and had a grimacing smile.
"There's good news and there's bad news," he said.
They were counting on the nearby chamber being empty of the legion of ravenous ghouls last seen there. On the side of good news, the ghouls were gone. The bad news was that the armor was also missing. Szandor lead them to the chamber, their footsteps echoing even more loudly in this large empty space. It was definitely the same room and the monster hunters were quick to show off the few features which were the same. But there wasn't much else of note in the room.
"We all knew this was a possibility," said Mikkel apologetically with a shrug. "We had no guarantee it would still be here after all this time."
Dane nodded, knowing that was fair. "Time to search for clues, I guess," he said, the disappointment still showing in his voice. He instinctively reached down for his coffee cup and then remembered he had drank it all.
Mikkel showed Dane the elevated dais where the armor had been. "It looked more impressive with everything else here," said Mikkel. "They had burning pots or trash cans they were using for light, making the armor shimmer. It was actually really cool. And they were all chanting and bowing like it was a big ritual. But everything is gone. Honestly, this area looks like it was picked clean - there's not even trash."
Dane pulled out The Goggles. Taken from a defeated villain, The Goggles were a pair of old fashioned goggles with amber lenses. Tiny knobs allowed the user to change the focus of The Goggles, but it wasn't clarity you used them for. Everything looked yellow through the amber lenses, but with proper tuning, the user could see the evidence of magic. Different sorts of magic showed up under different settings. Searching for magic was one of the things Dane did when he had an item or location but nothing else to investigate. Magic often seemed to be in play when things weren't adding up. Dane wasn't sure it would help in this case. From the picture and description, the armor didn't seem like it was magical, but Dane had to admit that sometimes the line between magic and technology seemed to be extremely blurry.
"Oh hey, those look familiar," said Mikkel. He raised his own goggles from around his neck. Though his goggles had green lenses and were useful only for night vision, there was a definite resemblance. "Do yours see in the dark too?"
"No, but I use these for scanning... like I'm doing now," said Dane.
"Scanning?" said Mikkel with a tone of disbelief, but his repeated word fell on deaf ears. Dane was already in full-on investigation mode, which tended to make him oblivious to what everyone else was doing. He walked around the room, both of his hands on the tiny knobs of The Goggles, tuning his vision to look for any residual traces. He hoped there might be symbols, a ghostly trail, or even an invisible door. He had dealt with an invisible door before. He also hoped there was a big yellow arrow pointing him where to go, but if he actually found that he'd also need to treat it with some suspicion. Helpful arrows were a sign of nefarious purposes, except, of course, in traffic signals and emergency exits.
"Got something!" said Dane, walking toward the dais and bending at the waist to peer downward. "It's faint, but there's a definite trail, Abby! I think that it goes off in this direction if we follow... Abby?" Dane looked up, his amber goggle panes flashing in the light. There was no point in going forward in full manic glory without an audience and co-conspirator. Mikkel seemed nice, but Dane already had a known audience for his ravings that had come down here with him.
Behind them, Abby and Szandor were just standing in the center of the room. Abby was disinterested but polite. Szandor was talking her ear off. "...and that's how we got out of that one! It was messed up, but we managed to carry on." There was a pause as he realized she was both unimpressed and uninterested in responding. He decided to push on despite all this. "So... I was thinking maybe if you were free some time we could do something. I mean, if you're cool with that. I mean, if you aren't, then I'm sure we could find something that maybe could
be... I dunno, better? Or something."
Mikkel walked over to the pair and cleared his throat. Abby took this opportunity to rejoin Dane. After she was out of earshot, Mikkel chided Szandor in a low voice. "Brother, she's not interested."
"I just thought that maybe..." said Szandor.
"You can't bogart her time."
"The other guy seems to be doing all the work," countered Szandor.
"Except, he needs her," said Mikkel. "She's like his Watson. He's gotta have someone to tell it all to. Makes him feel better."
Szandor nodded, understanding. "I should get a Watson."
"You are the Watson," said Mikkel with a grin. Szandor said nothing, he merely wore a sour expression.
Meanwhile, Abby was checking up on Dane's investigation. "You found something?"
Dane nodded, his fingers still on the tiny knobs, trying to home in on the perfect focus. "It's faint, but it's a trail..." In his vision, he saw yellow streaks on the ground, as if something was dragged. He began following the trail, Abby hovering behind him.
"It's actually magic?" she said. She had only seen The Goggles detect magic, and sometimes they weren't even very good at that. Dane had been sure the armor was technological. Magical armor would be an upgrade in case status.
Dane shrugged. "I'm not sure at all. But if it's coming up on The Goggles, then it's at least magic-like..."
"And whether it is or not, we're going to follow the trail," said Abby, knowing where the conversation was leading.
"I'm glad we're both of the same mind of this!" said Dane enthusiastically. "Now we just need to convince the Nowaks!"
The Nowaks weren't too hard to convince. In energetic terms, Dane explained the situation to Mikkel and Szandor. There was a trail that lead out of the chamber. After Dane pointed, Mikkel confirmed that it headed east. This was a lead, so the question now was whether the Nowak brothers would help. This was beyond the scope of the original job. Dane had paid the two monster hunters to take him here to the armor's chamber and then take them back to the surface, protection included. Going further in the depths to follow an invisible trail was beyond the job description.
After confirming the issue at hand, the two Nowak brothers walked a few paces away and had a short conference. They didn't need to talk long. They hadn't seen any action yet which, while boring for a delve, was in the case of an escort mission a good thing. Extending the job meant more time underground, which meant more chances of danger. This was a greater risk and it headed into unknown territory. But the two brothers also knew that there weren't many others qualified to take Dane and Abby farther. And they would not knowingly let the two civilians wander the tunnels alone. They had that responsibility to protection whether they were paid or not. Ultimately, it was less a question of whether they'd do it and more a question of whether they were going to ask for more payment. On that count, Mikkel overruled his brother.
"Okay, we'll do it," said the older hunter, returning from the huddle. He had no idea what was to come and how that would have made him reconsider.
The trail lead through a new series of tunnels. While there were intersections, it seemed likely that the trail lead forward, something Dane confirmed at every possible turnoff. Due to this, Dane felt comfortable taking off The Goggles and leaving them around his neck. Prolonged usage gave him a very sharp headache. Abby suspected that it was probably a good thing Dane couldn't keep them on twenty-four hours a day, looking for magic in everything. Given the possibility, he would probably do that.
After a short while, the nature of the tunnels changed. When they first started following the trail, the tunnels were still proper Avalon maintenance tunnels, even if they were poorly maintained and in a few cases they needed to step around rubble. But those gave way to tunnels that were roughly hewn. The walls weren't smooth and in some parts they seemed like they were not even constructed, but were simply natural cavernous tunnels. Szandor guessed that the builders either leveraged natural tunnels in their designs or that they had used rougher temporary tunnels when constructing the official tunnels. But none of them were sure. All they knew is that once the tunnel became rougher, intersections all but disappeared. The tunnel kept heading east and then it began to descend. Gradually at first, but then that changed as well.
The grade of descent sharply changed. It was much more obvious that they were getting deeper down into the earth. It was also a whole lot wetter. All the passages had been fairly damp from the Avalon rain, but this was different. Water dripped freely in this tunnel. The ground was rougher, so the wetness made it slick. They slowed down to keep from stumbling as a precaution, no matter how sure-footed they might feel. The tunnel also widened dramatically.
As they went farther down the sharp incline, water began dripping much more frequently.
Mikkel looked up to have water drip into his eye. As he put up the hood on his jacket, he said, "I think we're under the river."
Szandor also looked up but did not get an eye full of water. "That doesn't make me feel good at all. Are you sure?"
Mikkel shrugged. "No way to know for sure. We've been going down and east. We could be under the river. It sure is wet enough. And all the moisture seems to be coming from above."
"Could the tunnel could fall down on us due to the weight of the water?" said Abby. She wanted to go back. The longer she had been in the tunnels, the more she really wanted to be elsewhere. Darkness and claustrophobia did nothing for her nerves. When there was something to investigate in the chamber, she had calmed, but a further march into a wet tunnel had unnerved her again.
"Nonsense, these tunnels have been here intact for decades!" said Dane. "Fine Avalon engineering!" He almost sounded like he was going to slap one of the slick walls proudly.
"By Roger Carmichael, I'll remind you," said Abby, bringing up their old villain. As an architect from New Avalon's long history, he was responsible for the city's massive underground labyrinth.
"Okay, maybe it's less safe than I thought," conceded Dane. Carmichael was not a name that inspired their trust. "But we still have no reason to think that this tunnel will now, at this moment, just happen to collapse on us for no apparent reason."
"Except that seems to be how it works with you," said Abby. Dane had quite the ability to be in the right place at the right time. The right dangerous place at the right time. Whether that made him fortunate or unfortunate varied depending on who you asked. Many would consider that to actually be the wrong place at the wrong time.
Their banter did make the younger Nowak brother nervous. "Do we need to reevaluate this job?" said Szandor. "Because I'm suddenly feeling like there's more danger to this than we were told. And not from the monsters."
"Nobody's currently trying to kill me," said Dane, poorly attempting to allay the monster hunter's fears.
"What?" blurted Szandor.
"That we know of," said Abby under her breath.
Szandor looked back and forth between Abby and Dane. "I think we may want to head back now. Heading back seems a great idea. Mikkel, what do you think?"
In the next moment, a number of things happened at once. Everyone's focus was drawn to something different. Mikkel clutched his head, a sudden headache washing over him. Dane saw an object fly through the air to bounce once and land at their feet. He reached down to the grab the small sphere. Abby didn't notice the object. She instead was looking in the direction the object came from. Standing just at the edge of their field of light, barely even noticeable, was a man. He was dressed in a sandy-colored suit and vest, along with an old fashioned hat and tie. He was looking at them, his arm falling slack to his side. There was something unreadable in his expression. She would have raised some alert among the others, but she had no time.
Szandor had not found anything in particular to focus on and didn't even sense something happening. So he wasn't particularly alert when he saw his brother push Dane hard, so much that Dane went stumbling into Szandor's arms. Then the wall between them exploded.
Rock and debris went flying, followed by a wild froth of dark water. Flashlights were knocked from their hands, so visibility dropped dramatically. But it was enough light to see a giant monstrous reptile head push through the wall, its enormous jaws closing on the space where Dane had just been standing.
There was a screeching wail which filled the tunnel and their nostrils were burned with the stench of decaying fish. The gigantic head swept left and right, the creature searching for something, its massive teeth very apparent even in the low light and rushing water. Water began to fill the tunnel, rising to the bottom of their shoes.
Szandor had kept his flashlight strap around his wrist, so even though it had been knocked out of his hand, he was able to grab it and aim it at the creature that was in front of them. The gigantic snake-like head nearly filled the tunnel. Its jaw was so wide that the creature could easily swallow a man whole if it chose not to use its sword-like teeth. In the narrow beam of light, Szandor could see white scaly skin made dirty by the water. On one side of its head, a red eye glinted like a ruby in the beam of light, but there was a scarred socket where the other eye should be.
While Szandor shined the light from a pace or two behind, Dane was right in front of that massive head. The creature swept its head to either side but finally stopped its movement so it pointed at Dane. Though his feet were disappearing under water and this creature was facing him, he did not move. For once, he had no good reaction, no manic response. Fear frosted over any creative thinking. In the absence of ideas, his defaults were: run, look for a gadget, or talk his way out of it. Only one of those seemed useful in this case, but his legs were not responding. He numbly put the small sphere into his pocket as he stared at the monster. He was only beginning to get any control over his legs as the massive beast opened its mouth and lunged at Dane.
Burning Monday: (Dane Monday 2) Page 3