Soul Meaning (Seventeen)

by AD Starrling

  Victor’s eyes narrowed. ‘Do you have names?’

  Reznak shook his head. ‘Unfortunately, Vellacrus isn’t that trusting. I believe only she and Thorne know the identities of the possible traitors in your midst.’

  Victor studied the Crovir immortal for silent seconds. ‘Tell us about Germany,’ he said finally.

  We returned to the Dvorskies’ estate an hour later. The air had lost its wintry chill and the sun was warm on my face when I stepped out of the van. I followed the others inside the mansion, my mind still filled with the information that Reznak had shared with us.

  The foyer was crowded and noisy. The Bastians were busy packing: Victor had called his father on the drive back and updated him on the meeting.

  ‘Is it true? The Crovirs may only be days away from completing the vaccine?’ Anna said breathlessly as she crossed the hall towards me. I nodded grimly. Her eyes darkened.

  Victor came up behind her. ‘We need to move you to another safe house,’ he said.

  Anna glanced at him with a distracted frown. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘The equipment you asked for will be there.’ Victor stopped a passing Hunter in his tracks and handed him a sheet of paper. ‘Here, give this to the techs. They’re the codes for the Crovirs’ satellites.’ He turned back to Anna. ‘We’ve located eight Bastian and human scientists specialising in the areas that you wanted. They should be making their way to the compound even as we speak.’

  Tomas Godard appeared next to Anna and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’ll be all right, child. I won’t leave you,’ he said gruffly.

  Anna placed her fingers over her grandfather’s and stared at me intently. ‘Get me something from that lab,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Without a sample of that virus or the vaccine, we haven’t got a chance in hell of stopping the Crovirs.’ Her narrowed gaze shifted to my left. ‘And you, make sure he’s okay.’

  ‘Yes ma’m,’ drawled Reid.

  Anna and Tomas headed for the front doors. The sound of rotor blades rose from outside. I frowned as I stared at the black chopper landing on the lawn. ‘How many men are you sending with them?’ I said, troubled at the thought of being separated from the Godards.

  Victor sighed. ‘From here on it’ll only be Costas and Grigoriye.’ I glared at him and opened my mouth to voice a protest. He put a hand up to hush me. ‘The chopper will transport them to an abandoned airfield some miles from here, where they’ll take a jet to their final destination.’ He paused. ‘The Bastian Hunters guarding the safe house won’t have a clue who they’re protecting. And the fewer people know about it, the better.’

  Victor’s words made sense. Still, I could not quieten the feeling of dread in my gut. I walked out to the porch and watched the Godards leave moments later, my sense of unease unabated. Anna’s grim face disappeared from view as the helicopter rose towards the azure skies.

  ‘You ready?’ said Victor behind me.

  I turned and glanced around. ‘Your father’s not coming?’ I said, mildly surprised.

  Victor shook his head. ‘He needs to talk to the Bastian Councils, as well as the Assembly. Not everyone believes that Vellacrus has such a terrible plan in motion. Now that we have some evidence, it should be easier to convince them that action needs to be taken.’ He looked over his shoulder at the mansion. Roman walked past one of the windows of the study; he was talking on his cell and frowning. ‘We have to gather as many troops as we can.’ He turned a sombre gaze my way. ‘I fear we will need them all at the end.’

  Victor’s words were still ringing in my ears when we crossed the border into Germany a few hours later. According to Reznak’s intel, the Crovirs’ research lab was located outside the town of Amberg, in the state of Bavaria. By the time the convoy of SUVs reached the heavy woodland that enclosed the facility, a group of local Bastian Hunters had completed a preliminary recon of the site.

  ‘This is a map of the area,’ said the leader of the team as he led us to a makeshift tent between the trees. The immortal, whose name was Friedrich, pointed at the prints laid out on a foldable table. ‘And these are satellite images from an hour ago.’

  We studied the pictures in silence. I glanced at Reid. He frowned. This was not exactly going to be a walk in the park.

  ‘How deep is this thing?’ Victor finally said, his fingers tracing the thermal outline of the large underground structure that dominated the satellite photos.

  ‘Our best estimate? About two thousand feet,’ the Bastian Hunter replied briskly. ‘And that’s just the first level.’

  Anatole whistled softly under his breath and earned himself a dark look from Bruno.

  Friedrich indicated different sections of the pictures. ‘From what we can deduce, the labs are located at the very center of the structure, here and here. The rest of the facility consists of a number of specially designed ventilation shafts, four security rooms, a canteen, a gym, and the administrative and living quarters of the staff.’ He paused and looked at Victor. ‘We’ve patrolled the perimeter and can confirm that the number of guards is accurate.’

  A grim smile crossed Victor’s face as he studied the multitude of heat signals on the images. ‘Vellacrus has already increased security. Somehow I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Going overland undetected is going to be virtually impossible,’ continued the Bastian team leader. ‘Even if you disable their satellites, they’ll shoot us down before we get within spitting distance of the main elevator shaft.’ A faint grin tugged at his lips. ‘Luckily, we’ve found an alternative if somewhat unconventional route to get inside.’ One of his men handed him a large roll of paper. He unfolded it across the tabletop.

  I pushed aside the feelings of trepidation I still harboured about the Godards, took a step forward and studied the printout. ‘What’re we looking at?’

  Friedrich hesitated and glanced at Victor. Dvorsky nodded slightly. The Hunter cleared his throat. ‘It’s a mining map of the area. This entire forest is located above the remains of an old coal mine. You probably passed the disused main gates on the way here.’ He tapped the paper. ‘We’ve identified three other access points into the facility; here, here and here. Two of the tunnels are being guarded by the Crovirs.’ He looked up. ‘The third one isn’t.’

  I frowned.

  ‘What’s the catch?’ said Victor with narrowed eyes.

  ‘The tunnel collapsed,’ Friedrich said bluntly. ‘Not completely, obviously,’ he added at our expressions. ‘There’s about twelve feet of rubble blocking the entrance. Beyond that, it looks clear all the way.’ His fingers moved across the thermal images. ‘There are too many shafts and side passages for a security team to be able to cover practically, even with the added number of guards. And they have to have safety exits for the facility. This tunnel leads to one of them. We’ve already confirmed that they have no cameras down there.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s a strong possibility that the rest of the tunnel is unstable. It may explain why they seem unconcerned about guarding it. However, I believe it’s our best chance of getting in without being detected.’

  ‘Lucas?’ Victor’s eyebrows rose questioningly as he looked at me.

  I stared at the map and the satellite images on the table before glancing at Reid. He shrugged. ‘He’s right,’ I said quietly.

  Victor nodded briskly. ‘I concur.’ He turned to Friedrich. ‘We’ll leave half of the men on the surface. We might need them for back-up.’

  Friedrich’s team had used their time well. When we reached the site of the entrance to the coal mine, a micro digger was being unloaded from the back of a flatbed truck. Steel girders lay on the ground next to it. ‘We borrowed them from a local construction site,’ said Friedrich by way of explanation at our stares.

  ‘What’s the steel for?’ said Reid curiously.

  ‘They’re to support the tunnel entrance,’ replied Friedrich. He smiled grimly. ‘We’ll need an escape route if we get out of there alive.’

  ‘Ah,’ Reid murmured.
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br />   Anatole had gone pale. Bruno looked at him with a frown. ‘What’s wrong?’

  The immortal’s expression turned mournful. ‘You know how I feel about underground spaces,’ he muttered.

  The bodyguard stared at him. ‘We were underground at Benisek’s mansion,’ he said pointedly.

  ‘Yeah, but at least I could see the starlight and smell the fresh air,’ Anatole replied morosely. ‘This is gonna be like that time in Rome. Remember? When we were in the catacombs?’ He sighed. ‘God, I hated that trip. The rats were the size of my arm.’

  Bruno rolled his eyes.

  The tunnel was clear for the first ten feet. Beyond that, an impenetrable wall of compacted earth, wood and rock barred the way. It took an hour for the digger to move the core of the debris. After the last support beam was fixed into place, we geared up and checked our weapons.

  Victor was staying topside to cover us. He placed a hand on my shoulder as I turned to follow the others into the passage. ‘Be careful,’ he said steadily. ‘I’ll be waiting for your return.’ I nodded briskly and climbed through the ragged opening after Reid and the Bastians.

  It was like stepping inside a tomb. The air was dry and choked with the dust stirred up by the excavation. The light from our torch beams washed over rusting roof bolts and girders supporting a low, irregular ceiling. Timber frames propped up sections of the walls. Some had given way over time, causing tiny landslides that revealed the bare rock underneath. The odd pickaxe and shovel still littered the floor.

  ‘You okay?’ said Reid. He was looking at me with a frown.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I murmured, trying to mask the grimace on my face. To be truthful, I was not particularly comfortable with confined underground spaces either. Months spent in the battle trenches during the First World War had seen to that. I also had a highly unpleasant memory from my time in Vienna in 1683, when I became trapped for several days in one of the city’s ancient tunnels after it caved in behind me. Had it not been for a fortuitous explosion from a nearby Ottoman mine, I would have been buried alive for the rest of the siege, along with the rats. I took a deep breath and headed deeper into the mine.

  Up ahead, Anatole muttered a short prayer.

  A hundred feet in, we came to an open elevator shaft descending into pitch blackness. Friedrich shone his torch over the control box at the side and pulled a lever. Nothing happened. He opened the panel, changed a fuse and tried again. A high-pitched roar erupted from the old electric motor. The gears engaged and the elevator whined into life.

  A wire cage rose shakily from the abyss, past the corroded rungs of an emergency ladder. We climbed inside and started a slow, rickety descent into the gloom. Two hundred feet down, horizontal galleries started to appear off the central shaft. They looked abandoned.

  ‘How far are we going?’ said Anatole uneasily as he eyed the tunnels being reclaimed by the shadows above us.

  ‘All the way to the bottom,’ replied Friedrich.

  The lift eventually stuttered to a stop about a thousand feet below ground. We exited the wire cage warily. Despite the glare of our torch beams, the darkness at the bottom of the pit had a suffocating, cloying quality that threatened to overwhelm the senses. I could hear Anatole’s heavy breaths somewhere to my left.

  ‘There had better not be rats,’ the immortal murmured to no one in particular.

  A tunnel opened up ahead of us. We entered the low, straight passage. More galleries appeared, branching off the main conduit at regular intervals. We passed several caved-in channels. Half a mile later, a faint whine emerged in the distance.

  ‘What’s that?’ said Reid.

  ‘The fans in the south-west ventilation shaft,’ murmured Friedrich. ‘We’re close to the facility.’

  I removed the Glock from the holster on my thigh and nudged the safety catch off. Soft clicks around me indicated that the others were doing the same. I could feel tension spreading through the group. A muted light appeared in front of us. The soles of our boots struck concrete. The darkness receded.

  We stopped on the edge of a brightly lit, circular vertical duct.

  The shaft was thirty feet wide and smooth walled. Some fifty feet below, the blades of a horizontal fan rotated lazily, drawing air down from the surface. Other fans were visible beneath it. I looked up.

  The roof of the borehole was lost in darkness. Narrow handrails rose on the east side of the shaft and disappeared into the gloom.

  ‘Oh boy,’ Anatole murmured behind me.

  Friedrich holstered his gun and removed a pistol bow from his backpack. He squinted through the crosshairs of the telescopic sight at the tunnel on the opposite side of the duct and pulled the trigger. There was a soft thump as the arrow carrying a zip line thudded into the concrete ceiling. Another Hunter drilled a hole in the roof above our heads, screwed in a steel eye bolt and fastened the end of the cable to it.

  Friedrich unhooked a carabiner from his harness, locked himself onto the line and quickly winched himself over the gaping space. We followed him across one at a time.

  The passage on the other side of the ventilation shaft extended another eighty feet before stopping at a rusty air-tight door. It took three of us to twist open the stiff, circular wheel that sealed it shut. Moments later, the panel finally creaked and moved on its hinges.

  We gazed over the threshold into the bowels of a modern elevator shaft.

  ‘Now we go down,’ said Friedrich quietly, indicating the metal rungs that ran along the wall outside the doorway.

  Six hundred feet below, we came to a stationary lift cabin. We continued past it and reached the base of the shaft minutes later.

  A single, narrow access door stood in the north wall of the structure. No sound escaped from beyond it. I slipped the katana out of its scabbard and gripped the handle of the Glock tightly.

  Friedrich glanced at us with a frown. ‘Ready?’ he said tensely.

  Anatole shrugged. ‘As ready as we’ll ever be, I guess,’ he murmured.

  The Bastian Hunter grabbed the circular handle, turned it and pulled the door towards him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  An empty boiler room lay beyond the base of the ventilation shaft. We crossed the dim space carefully, our eyes scanning the shadows; any noise we made was muffled by the rumble and hiss from the pipes on the walls and ceiling around us.

  A second door appeared on the other side of the boiler room. It led to a narrow white corridor. A staircase was visible at the opposite end of the passage.

  ‘The labs should be a couple of levels beneath us,’ said Friedrich. He was staring intently at the security camera in a corner of the ceiling above the doorway. ‘Are we good to go?’ he murmured into the mouthpiece of his microphone.

  ‘You’re clear,’ a voice replied in our earpieces. The Bastian techs had used the access codes provided by Reznak to infiltrate the Crovirs’ satellites and temporarily override the CCTV system inside the research facility. A series of false images would replace the actual pictures being recorded and ideally fool the security guards long enough for us to get in and out of the labs. We headed along the corridor in single file and started down the stairs.

  We had just reached the first landing when a door clanged open somewhere above us. We froze and flattened ourselves against the wall. Rapid footsteps echoed on the metal steps and faded in the distance. We waited a moment before resuming our descent.

  Two storeys below, we came to a high containment, stainless steel door. A glazed circular window sat in the top half of the panel: beyond it was an empty, sterile white corridor. I stared at the airtight seals around the frame and the coded access security panel next to the handle with a sinking feeling.

  ‘That’s not good,’ said Reid quietly.

  Friedrich slipped a small rectangular device from his bag. It was an electronic door opener. As he moved to connect it to the security panel, I placed a hand on his shoulder and stopped him. ‘That’ll take too long,’ I said with a frown.
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  The Bastian Hunter looked at the device before staring at me steadily. ‘Do you have a better idea?’

  ‘Yes. Does anyone have a wireless cell phone?’

  The Hunters glanced at each other warily. Reid smiled. Bruno hesitated before handing me his phone. I flipped the security panel open and connected a pair of wires to the back of the device.

  ‘I thought you couldn’t get a signal this far below ground,’ said Anatole as they watched me work.

  ‘Most modern mines have advanced digital communication systems,’ I murmured, my fingers dancing over the touch screen. ‘Even though this one is old, it would surprise me if the Crovirs hadn’t installed the latest technology for their labs.’

  Seconds later, a low beep issued from the containment door. It hissed open on silent hinges. I disconnected the cell and handed it back to Bruno.

  Friedrich’s eyebrows rose slightly. ‘I’m impressed,’ he murmured.

  ‘You should’ve seen what he did to Burnstein’s safe,’ said Reid with a grin.

  We moved soundlessly into the corridor beyond. Thirty feet in, we reached a junction. Friedrich peered around the corner of the wall and drew his head back sharply. The sound of footsteps rose close by, echoing loudly on the concrete floor, before gradually dying in the distance.

  The Bastian team leader looked at me with a faint frown. ‘We’ll take the north lab,’ he said, pointing to his men. ‘You take the south one.’ He paused and gave me a steady stare. ‘Good luck.’ He offered his hand.

  I hesitated: it was the closest I had ever gotten to a friendly gesture from a Bastian Hunter. I shook his hand and nodded. We parted ways, Reid, Anatole and Bruno following behind me.

  Five minutes later, my earpiece crackled into life. Friedrich’s voice came across. ‘Does something strike you as odd?’ murmured the Bastian Hunter.