Not exactly what I had expected.
Rhys, Shing, and I all walked past Nicole to enter the elevator, but when it came time for Dad to get on, Nicole reached out a hand to stop him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “but only Berserkers and Binders are allowed past this point.”
Dad’s face flushed and his neck turned all red and splotchy – a sure sign of an imminent explosion. And who better to take the brunt than Nicole? I settled back to watch the fireworks and enjoy the carnage.
But instead of the expected explosion, Dad remained calm. He took a deep breath and spoke very civilly – even if it was between clenched teeth.
“I will not allow my daughter down there without me accompanying her. Either we both go, or neither of us go.” He folded his arms across his chest. “Besides, I was a Berserker for over 350 years. There are no secrets I don’t already know or can’t be trusted with.”
I was both pleased and disappointed at the same time. I was always pleased when Dad managed to control his temper, but at the same time I would have really enjoyed watching plastic girl melt from the heat.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Montgomery,” she said, “but rules are rules.”
It was time to back Dad up. I stepped off of the elevator and stood next to my dad, imitating his arms folded pose.
We looked tough together.
“I guess I’m not going, then,” I said.
Rhys and Shing both stepped off the elevator and stood beside us. Strength in numbers.
Nicole’s plastic smile seemed to slide off her face and she looked visibly flustered.
A good look for her, I might add.
“Uh, let me make a few calls,” she said. She brushed back her hair to reveal an ear piece headset. She pressed something on it, turned on her heel, and started walking down the hallway.
“Yeah, we have a problem,” she said, before entering an unoccupied side room and closing the door behind her.
“We could just go down right now,” I suggested. The elevator doors were still open. Apparently they didn’t automatically close on their own.
Dad shook his head. “It’s not a question of sneaking down to see what’s there. I’ve been down there before. In fact, I helped design and build this place. What I want is for them to let me stay with you during the meeting.” He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the head. “And thanks for backing me up.”
“Any time, Dad.”
After a few minutes, Nicole came out of the room, looking considerably more composed. Her plastic smile was back.
“I made a few calls, and given the unusual circumstances they are willing to make an exception for you Mr. Montgomery. You are welcome to accompany Madison to the council meeting.”
Although it took every ounce of self-control I had, I managed to wait until the elevator doors had closed before pumping my arm and high-fiving my dad.
Take that, plastic girl!
The elevator only had two buttons – neither of them labeled. The top button was dark, but the bottom had been lit when we got on the elevator. I figured it had been electronically programmed by Nicole’s tablet.
As the elevator began to descend, we all became very still and no one talked. What was it about an elevator that made everyone feel the need to be quiet while it was moving? I generally went along with it, but I never really understood why everyone had this unspoken agreement. Were we supposed to be pretending the other people weren’t there, or was the idea to just not make noise in an enclosed space?
I had the sudden urge to laugh out loud or shout as loud as I could to see what kind of reaction I got, but I wasn’t entirely sure the elevator wasn’t being monitored and decided to at least to pretend to have some decorum.
After what seemed like a very long few minutes of silent descent, the light on the bottom button went out and the elevator doors slid open.
A long passageway stretched out in front of us. Long enough that I couldn’t see the end of it. The walls were a bright white, and lights were placed every twenty feet along the ceiling. The floor was lit with long rows of tiny lights that ran along each side of the hallway making the corridor feel like a cross between the Hoth Rebel Base and the Bat Cave.
“I see they’ve made some upgrades since I was last here,” Dad said.
“One or two,” said Rhys.
“And just how far under the mountain does this go?” I asked. Between the elevator descent and the hallway leading directly toward the mountain, we were definitely going to be under a lot of rock.
“Pretty deep,” Dad said. “But you don’t have anything to worry about. I personally supervised the excavation of these tunnels when this place was built. I made sure they would hold.”
It was a good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic, because just the idea of being literally under a mountain was already disturbing enough. Now that I started thinking about it, weren’t the Hawaiian Islands pretty much just a bunch of active volcanoes sticking out of the water? I had a brief vision of the floor crumbling and all of us plunging to a fiery death in a giant pool of bubbling lava.
What kind of protection would my Berserker powers give for lava? It would probably be best to never have to find out.
Maybe I was a little claustrophobic after all.
We walked down the corridor for at least a quarter mile. The temperature was quite cool, and I felt a slight breeze as we walked. The hallway ran straight without a single door or cross corridor until we reached a large metal door.
And when I say large, I mean large. Like bank-vault large, or underground-military-base large.
The massive steel door was already open, showing a width three feet thick with eight metal rods each six inches in diameter spaced down its side.
The door was obviously meant for security, but I couldn’t help wondering for a brief moment if it was meant to keep things out or lock them in?
I entered the room with no small amount of nervousness, following behind Rhys, Shing, and my Dad. None of them seemed even slightly worried. I, however, could hardly keep my hands from shaking. I clasped them in front of me to keep them still, but something about that posture made me feel like a powerless little girl, so I quickly let them go and held them stiffly at my sides.
Awkward was better than powerless, right?
The room itself was very large and open. The room was decorated in ultra-plush corporate chic. Everything was made of rich dark wood and soft leather. It was dominated on one end by a massive screen that took up most of the far wall. In front of the screen, on a raised platform, was a large podium with a microphone.
Facing the podium were three rows of what seemed to be individual pods or compartments. They were recessed down into the ground so you would have to step down several stairs to get into them. Each row had four of these pods split in half with two on one side of an aisle and two on the other. The rows were set at an angle from the front so they resembled three V’s pointed towards the back of the room.
Each of the twelve pods had a wide desk with a bunch of computers or some sort of technical communication equipment built into it. I couldn’t see much more than that from the back of the room.
We were clearly not the first people to arrive. I saw several people moving around and talking with each other. The room held the low buzz of multiple conversations going on at once.
All of that stopped momentarily when we walked into the room. The silence lasted for a long, awkward moment as everyone turned to look at us and then returned to their conversation.
A slender woman in her early thirties with shoulder-length blonde hair and bright blue eyes left the people she was speaking with and hurried over to us, a huge grin on her face. She looked expectantly at Shing.
Shing gave her a formal bow that she returned, but I could tell she was anxious to get through the formalities. She had a look of pent-up energy waiting to be released that reminded me of my best friend Amy when she had a good piece of news she was dying to tell me.
Shing turne
d to face us. “Allow me to introduce Julie Pierce. Julie is my Binder. Julie, this is Madison, Scottie, and you already know Rhys.”
Julie shook all our hands in turn. When she shook my hand, she gave me an even bigger grin, and pulled me in for a hug and then held me out at arms’ length, like an aunt who hasn’t seen her niece in several years. I just needed her to pinch my cheek and say something about how much I’ve grown to make the scene complete.
“Madison, I’m so glad to finally meet you,” she said, and pulled me back in for another hug. “Shing has told me so much about you.”
“He has?” I asked. I glanced over at Shing who looked slightly embarrassed.
“Oh yes,” she said. “Every time we’ve talked over the past six months you’ve been all he’s talked about. You know how he gets when he’s excited about something.”
Actually I had no idea. As far as I could tell, Shing hadn’t been excited about a single thing since I’d met him. He was probably the most reserved person I knew.
“Well, I hope he’s told you good things,” I said, not sure what else to say. She was very friendly, but a little overwhelming.
We didn’t get much more time to talk, as other people started filing over to see us. I went through the motions of shaking many hands as I was introduced to people who up until now had only been names and facts drilled into me by Rhys and my father.
I already knew Sunee and Nakai, they were the two binders who had come to confirm that I was a Berserker and a Binder. Nakai was the unofficial leader of the Binders and Sunee was the keeper of the Sarolt stone, the strange rock that was somehow attuned to Berserker and Binder powers.
Arthur Cooper, Josiah Smith, and Davu – who didn’t seem to have a last name – were all here. I had met these Berserkers earlier that spring when Eric had brought them to visit.
All the other Berserkers I hadn’t yet met were here except for Nanti who was the Berserker currently in hiding.
The first to introduce himself was Yul Romanov, a broad-shouldered Russian man. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, but from what Rhys and Dad told me, he had become a Berserker later in life and was only three hundred and fifty or so. He had dark hair and a neatly-trimmed beard that only partially hid his infectious smile. He grabbed my hand with both of his and shook it vigorously.
“Madison! It is good to finally meet you!” he said and pulled me in to give me a kiss on both cheeks. It was one of those not-quite-kisses where he put his cheek next to mine and made a kissing sound without actually touching me with his lips.
This was one type of greeting that I had only partially gotten used to. It was easier when girls did it. Having men pull me in that closely was still a little out of my comfort zone.
The next Berserker was Tezcacoatl, but everyone called him Tez. He was rumored to be an actual Aztec. Not a descendent or some wannabe, but the actual thing. Of course, he didn’t quite fit my stereotype – no long ponytail or jaguar tooth jewelry. He had buzzed his dark hair short with a single streak of blue dyed in it. He looked to be a little bit younger than Yul, but according to my information was actually quite a bit older.
The last of the new Berserkers was Miguel Ortega. He was from Mexico and looked to be about my age. He had only become a Berserker thirteen years earlier at the age of fifteen, so physically he was younger than I was, even though he had lived almost twice as long as I had.
After I had met the last of the Berserkers, Nakai came up to me and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. Rhys and Dad were both talking with other Berserkers, so I was essentially alone.
“Now that you’ve met the brawn,” Nakai said, “it’s time to introduce you to the brains behind everything here.”
Nakai gently, but firmly enough that I got the idea following her wasn’t optional, escorted me across the room to where a group of four Binders stood talking together. They stopped their conversation as we approached and looked at me with undisguised curiosity.
“I would like you all to meet Madison Montgomery,” Nakai said. “She is the newest Binder... and Berserker.”
The looks I got made me want to check a mirror and make sure I hadn’t sprouted horns or a second head.
“Uh, hi,” I said. I looked over to where Rhys and my dad were, but they were trapped in their own conversations. I wasn’t going to get any help from them to escape my awkward situation.
“My, my,” said a pretty brunette woman with a melodic French accent. “A Berserker and a Binder. How... unusual.” She gave me an appraising look that made me even more uncomfortable than I already was.
Nakai nodded in the direction of the French woman. “Madison, this is Yvette,” she said.
Yvette gave me what had to be the coldest smile I had ever seen. “A pleasure to meet you, Madison,” she said, but the tone in which she said it clearly told a different story.
Much to my relief, the awkwardness was quickly interrupted by another Binder. “I’m Onaona,” said the other women. She had long dark hair pulled back on one side with a large flower tucked behind her ear. Her perfect skin, flawlessly white teeth, and gorgeous figure made me think of some sort of Hawaiian swimsuit model rather than a Binder. She was by far the youngest of the women here – besides me, of course.
“Onaona,” I said, making sure I repeated her name correctly. “That’s a beautiful name.”
Onaona wrinkled her nose, obviously disagreeing. “As long as you don’t speak Hawaiian,” she said. “It means sweet smell.” She made a pretend gagging motion and smiled.
I liked her already.
Nakai then introduced me to Dagmar, a very tall Swedish woman with long blonde hair and Kamiko, an older Japanese woman who was one of the tiniest women I had ever seen. Standing between them gave me the very strange feeling of being both short and tall at the same time.
By this time Rhys had broken away from his conversations and had come over to see me, which made me feel much more relaxed. We made semi-awkward chitchat for the next few minutes until Sunee began circulating through the crowd asking everyone to take their seats as the meeting was about to begin.
We all wandered over to the pods situated in front of the stage. Rhys showed me mine in the second row, next to the aisle. Apparently each Berserker-Binder pair was assigned a separate pod and during these meetings would sit together – a reminder that they were tied to each other. Even the Berserkers of the seven were connected to a single Binder each and when they died, that Binder would die with them.
In some ways, the pods reminded me of the private boxes at sporting events. They were designed for viewing, but they also had all the amenities you needed right there with you. Granted I hadn’t ever been in one before, but we had once sat close enough at a Blazers game that I had been able to peek in.
Inside the pod was a desk with a large monitor and a laptop connected to the internet. Atop the monitor was a high-end webcam, presumably for when they didn’t have everyone here and needed to do some sort of video conference.
In the back of the pod was a small table set with a pitcher of water, glasses, and various fruits and snacks – all mild and designed to appeal to a Berserker’s over-sensitive pallet.
There were also two doors in the back of each pod – one leading to a small restroom, and the other to a small room with two twin beds.
Apparently these meetings were not short.
A loud thud followed by a mechanical whirring, signaled that the main security door had closed and we were now completely secure.
Or trapped, if the threat were inside.
Dad and I each sat down in large leather chairs, and Rhys went into the pod directly in front of ours. Technically, since I was his Binder now, he should be sitting with me. But since we hadn’t told the Binders yet, we needed to wait for the moment.
Despite the fact that the pods were sunken, I realized that the stair-step structure was set up so that I could see each of the occupants of the other pods without leaving my seat.
I didn’t like having Rh
ys and Shing in separate pods away from me – especially Rhys – but I felt better knowing that my dad was with me so I wasn’t completely alone.
Once everyone had been seated and had a chance to settle in, Nakai climbed the stairs to the stage and stood at the podium.
“I will dispense with the formalities and move directly to the reason we are all here today,” she said. “As you are all aware of, we received report from our sources in Mexico that the binding for Thuanar appears to be weakening.”
The screen behind Nakai lit up, showing a photo of the imposing Puebla cathedral and the text of an email from Araceli explaining what she had observed. Our corresponding personal monitors also showed the images.
“This news is disturbing for many reasons,” Nakai said. “Not the least of which is that we have yet to find any trace of the new Berserker and Binder for Thuanar. It has been several months since Aata has passed from our company and there has been no sign of a replacement. Sunee has been searching with the Sarolt stone, but up to now it has been silent.”
A murmur ran through the audience. Apparently not everyone had realized the extent of the issue.
The sad part was that they didn’t even know the half of it. They were worried about one set – Aata and Christine. What they didn’t know was that I had the powers of three Berserkers and four binders – Aata, his Binder Christine, Mallika, Eric, and Kara. Not to mention that I was still the Berserker and Binder for Pravicus.
I looked to my Dad. If we were going to come clean about this, we needed to do it soon.
Dad met my gaze and held it for a moment, seeming to search for something in my eyes. He nodded then held up a finger for me to wait.
“So what are we going to do about it?” said a loud voice with a distinctly American accent. I turned around to see the speaker was a middle-aged African-American woman sitting in the pod behind me by herself. I hadn’t met her yet, but by virtue of the fact she was sitting by herself she had to be Jacinda, the Binder to Nanti who was currently in hiding. She had a reputation for being rather outspoken among the other Binders.
Bonds That Break (The Havoc Chronicles Book 3) Page 5