“I think Cynda’s transformed.”
“What do you mean by- Oh shit! Lucy behind you!”
I whipped around just in time to be knocked on my back, hard enough that my head hit the concrete floor with a sickening crack that temporarily blurred my vision. Cynda sat on my chest, hands clutching my shoulders with enough force to break the bones. Her skin was a sallow shade, somewhere between that of the chimeras and her usual translucence, and her hair was a matted mass of black tangles.
“Lucy,” she rasped through a mouth caked with dried blood. Her breath was rank enough that I nearly gagged. “Help…I can’t control…”
“Fight it!” I wheezed. “I can’t help you if you crush me to death.”
There was a flash of human comprehension in her darkened eyes, but I could tell she was losing the battle with her animal side. She loosened her grip from my shoulders, but did not move.
“Cynda,” I heard Anil say softly from somewhere behind me. “Cynda, come here.”
“Anil, be careful,” Saba hissed.
“Everyone back up, let her know you’re not a threat,” said Anil. I heard several footsteps move away. “Cynda, you’re hurting Lucy.”
“Hurting…Lucy?” Her eyes flickered between dark and light gray as Anil’s voice cut through the animalistic tendencies.
“Keep talking,” I told him. “She’s coming back.”
“Cynda, you know Lucy, she’s your sister. Your sister who cares about you very much. Everyone here cares about you. And uh, I care about you a whole lot too. I hope you know that.”
“How can you care?” Cynda’s words were anguished, but her eyes were lightening. “I’m an animal!”
“You are a beautiful person,” Anil told her. “Fight it, Cynda. I know you’re stronger than this. I know that you know how human you are.”
The flickering of her eyes slowed and eventually went back to light silver, but her skin remained sallow. With a tormented scream, she threw herself off of me and fell against the wall, sliding down until she was sitting in the fetal position.
“Don’t…” she sobbed. “Stay away from me.”
But Anil crept closer. As I sat up and waited for the burning in my lungs to subside, I watched as he sat down beside Cynda and carefully reached out to put his hand on her shoulder.
“Hush, it’s okay, Cynda,” he said in a soothing voice. “No one blames you. No one thinks any less of you for what you can’t control.” As he spoke, Anil’s hand moved down her shoulder to her arm as if he was searching for something. The monitor, I remembered suddenly. Sure enough, just before Cynda had a chance to break away from his grasp Anil found and depressed the button on the monitor that dispensed a sedative and the blocking drug. Instantly she fell limp and gradually her color returned to normal.
“Quick thinking! Good job, Anil,” I said.
“Yeah, but she’s got to get out of here,” he replied grimly. “There should be five doses in the monitor and Abe said they’ll only last about an hour each.”
“We’ve got the helicopter on standby,” said Ingrid. “As soon as we can move Lona, we’ll give them the word to fly in. They’re not landing, but they have a platform they can lower. Four people can go.”
Fortunately, we didn’t have any more unwanted visitors while we waited for news on Lona. Her screaming had stopped not long after Cynda showed up and the hall fell once again into eerie silence. Finally, the door opened and Miles staggered out, his ashen face streaked with tears, but he was smiling.
“I have a son.”
Chapter 30
Lona was in no condition to move, but we were able to fashion a stretcher out of a mattress and the door Cynda had pulled from its hinges. Ingrid called for the helicopter and we began our perilous journey back to the entrance of the bunker. Lance and Johnny took the lead while Miles and Ingrid carried Lona and her tiny bundle. Anil carried Cynda over his shoulder and Saba and I brought up the rear, keeping an eye on the hall behind us the entire way. Thankfully, Lance had an impeccable sense of direction because if it had been up to me, we would have ended up lost in the labyrinth-like bunker.
Whether it was luck or divine intervention, we ran into no resistance and made it to the entrance just as the platform was being lowered. Unfortunately, when it was time to decide who was staying and who was leaving, the arguments began.
“She needs a doctor, Johnny,” Miles argued, “and you’re still injured.”
“She needs her husband more,” Johnny shot back, “and she’ll have the best doctors in the world in twenty minutes if you just get your ass moving.”
“Honey, give me your armor and any weapons you brought,” Saba demanded of Anil in a motherly tone.
“What? Mom no way! You were drugged. You need to see a doctor as much as anyone else!”
“Guys we don’t have time for this,” Lance said calmly, but with warning. “Anil, listen to your mother. Cynda’s more comfortable with you than anyone else except Lucy, and I don’t think she’s going anywhere until her father and Andre are found.”
Anil grudgingly handed over his gear to his mother, including his phone, as hers was lost somewhere in the swamp. “The network is down, have someone show you how to use the work around,” he said before hugging Saba goodbye. “I love you mom, be careful!”
“Miles,” I said softly, “go with Lona. None of us would forgive ourselves if anything happened to you.”
“Get on that bird before I throw you,” Lance added.
“Miles.” Lona’s voice was a breathy whisper. “If you don’t listen to your friends, I’m filing for divorce, even if you’re dead.”
“The lady’s wish is my command,” said Miles, throwing his hands into the air in surrender before climbing onto the platform.
Those of us who remained watched as they were raised into the helicopter and whisked away. Once the sound of the propeller became a distant echo, we turned to each other and began planning our next move.
“So what happened to the network?” Saba asked.
“No one knows,” her husband explained. “We noticed it was out right after we got here. Either the military is jamming our signal or something happened to the satellite system.”
With just Isaac and Andre left to rescue, we went back into the bunker and began our search. Since I still had Andre’s location, we headed in that direction. When we came to the split, we went left rather than take the stairs below, but soon found ourselves at a dead end. We retraced our steps, went down, and then left again. At least by that point I had so much on my mind that the panic over heading further underground had subsided. However, after several more dead ends we came to yet another staircase that we couldn’t avoid. I tried not to think about how far below the surface we were descending as I gripped the railing tightly. Focus, I told myself, Andre and Isaac both risked their lives for you. You can handle some stupid stairs.
When we got to the bottom, we were met by another spider web of halls, all leading in different directions.
“Lance, correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t you a SEAL?” Johnny asked, looking up at the pipes above his head in contemplation.
“Until I was thrown out,” Lance replied bitterly.
“Tell me this doesn’t remind you of a submarine.”
Lance glanced up and followed Johnny’s gaze. “You know, I was thinking the same thing when we were up on the first level and hit that dead end. But this isn’t like any sub I’ve ever been on.”
“Russian?” Johnny mused.
“No way, been on plenty of those. This is way too small to be military,” Lance replied. “Unless… Hang on. I think I know where I’ve seen this configuration before.” I was quite curious to hear what Lance’s theory was, but before he continued, the wall I was leaning against fell away and I found myself falling.
I would have screamed if the air hadn’t been knocked out of my lungs. I must have fallen about ten feet, but instead of hitting solid ground, I slid even lower, as if I had fallen
into some sort of human-sized game of Chutes and Ladders. When I did come to a violent stop, I was rather grateful for the helmet I was wearing because I slammed face first into a metal door. My right shoulder burned with pain and I was pretty sure I had broken something.
I tried climbing back up the chute, but the incline was too steep, even with the studded soles of my boots. With a curse, I pulled out my phone, which thankfully had survived the fall intact, and ran a scan. I was out of range of the group. I began to panic when I realized that not only was I completely alone, but I was now at least one hundred feet below ground. I checked my phone and saw that Andre’s transmitter signal showed I was quite close to his location. This one bit of information was all I needed to push the panic away, at least temporarily.
The door I had smashed into was locked, but I picked it rather quickly and found myself tumbling into a room full of machinery, pipes, and moving pistons. It reminded me of the engine room on the steamboat that gave river tours of the Mississippi. I was pretty sure the only submarines that ran on steam were in Jules Verne books, so for all I knew, I could very well have stumbled into a nuclear reactor. Considering that vampires were not immune to radiation poisoning, this was unnerving. Also, the idea of traversing the maze of dangerous machinery gave me pause, but I had no other option.
I carefully picked my way across the maze and stuck to the widest paths available, all the while cursing the fact that this was impeding my progress. The only guidance I had was Andre’s transmitter signal, which frustrated me to no end. I had only made it about thirty feet into the maze when I found myself faced with the decision to either squeeze through a narrow gap between two red hot pipes, or try to navigate through a series of slow moving, but large enough to crush me, pistons. Considering my lack of cat-like reflexes, I went for the pipes.
The armor I was wearing added some protection against the heat, but it also made it impossible to fit through the narrow gap. Knowing I would likely regret the decision later, I shed my vest and helmet before turning sideways to slither through the pipes. The skin on my back began to blister and it smelled like my hair had singed, but I made it through and, luckily, the path widened once again. Unfortunately, I was only able to gain another twenty feet before it split again.
As I tried to decide which path was easier to navigate, I heard a low growl behind me and froze. I turned around and dove to the side just in time to avoid being gutted by two-inch claws. I scrambled to my feet and ran down the increasingly narrow path to my right, hoping that the chimera’s size would make it impossible for it to follow. The sharp sting of flesh being torn from my shoulder indicated that I had severely underestimated the creature’s agility. I stumbled to the ground and reached for a CPA. I knew that killing the chimera was stupid and dangerous, but my only other option was being ripped to shreds, so I decided to take the risk.
I rolled to my knees and raised my weapon, expecting an attack. Instead, the chimera fell to the ground in a lifeless heap.
“It’s not dead, just knocked out and I’m not sure for how long.”
I looked up to see Isaac, or at least someone who looked like Isaac, standing over me. “What…” I struggled to clear my head and tried to remember one of the security questions the others had for Isaac, cursing the fact that we hadn’t had a chance to come up with one of our own. “What was the only thing Evan ever caught on your fishing trips?”
“A cold,” he replied with a wide grin. “Very smart of you to ask, Lucy. I know that the bastard is running around with my face, so we can’t be too careful. Are you injured?”
“No,” I replied and accepted his help standing. “What happened just now?” I glanced nervously at the immobile chimera.
“If you grab them at the base of their neck and pinch, they fall. I saw the bastard do it not long after he attacked me. Not the easiest thing to do when they’re charging at you, but if I hadn’t seen him do it, I’d still be locked up. What are you doing here, anyway? The only reason he took me was to lure you back.”
“I realize that, but we can’t leave yet, Andre’s still down here, come on.” I motioned for him to follow and started running in the direction of Andre’s signal.
“Hang on, Lucy, there’s nothing down there except a dead end.”
“What? No, Andre’s down there!” I showed him the transmitter on my screen.
“There’s nothing back that way but a four by four torture chamber that I just left.”
“There’s got to be something else. Maybe there was another cell that you didn’t see.” He frowned, but followed me. At last, the maze of machinery ended and we found a short corridor.
“This is where I was,” Isaac said and pointed to a small room that did indeed look like a torture chamber with chains set high into the walls. The only other door was a thick metal portal with a round glass window that gave me a murky view of the swamp waters on the other side.
“I don’t get it!” I went to the door and checked the transmitter again. If it was to be believed then Andre was mere feet from me. Unless he had somehow grown gills and was swimming around in the swamp, I was completely baffled. “Where does this go?”
“Into the water. That’s how he brought me down here, in some kind of a diving vessel that docked up against this door. Lucy, I don’t want to alarm you, but there is the possibility-”
“Andre’s alive,” I said sharply. “The transmitter would alert me otherwise.”
“Fair enough,” Isaac said with a nod. “But we have to find another way out of here.”
“Stairs,” I said and looked around. “He’s probably a floor above us. The map isn’t three-dimensional. We have to find stairs.”
We ran back into the weird engine room. Without a clear idea where I was going, the twisting maze-like paths were dizzying.
“How did you get down here?”
“I fell down a chute,” I admitted sheepishly. “The network is down. The only way we’re going to find the others is if we get out of here. But I didn’t see any stairs when I came down.”
“To the side,” Isaac said and indicated the path that circumnavigated a bank of turbines. “If there are stairs, they aren’t going to be inside that mess.”
We navigated our way around the perimeter, avoiding the worst obstacles, until we came to the open hatch where I had entered. “Great, what now?” I asked as I looked back up the steep chute.
“There’s stairs right here,” Isaac said, pointing to a set of metal stairs, that I had failed to notice, right next to the chute.
The staircase was circular and as we climbed higher, I realized that we had to have gone more than one floor, but we had yet to reach a landing. I looked up and noticed with dismay that we had a lot farther to go. With grim determination, I quickened my pace. I knew Isaac was having trouble keeping up with me and I felt bad, but I had to know where we were heading. The further we got from Andre’s signal, the more frustrated I became.
When I finally reached the last stair, I stood on the small landing, dumfounded. In front of me was a solid steel wall. “Dammit!” I slammed my fists against the metal and toppled forward as it swung away as easily as a screen door. My elation over not being trapped in the stairwell fell flat as soon as Isaac caught up and the door closed behind us, I realized exactly where we were. We had climbed all the way back to the right wing dead end, on the very first floor of the bunker. “This cannot be happening!” I screamed. “Tell me there’s another way down there!”
“I don’t even know where we are,” Isaac wheezed.
“Back at the entrance,” I said dejectedly with a glance at my phone. Andre’s signal was once again nearly a half mile from mine. We ran back to the intersection and down to the second level. When we got to the next intersection I paused, unable to remember if we had gone left or right to find Lona. Without the GPS, I was at a loss and it angered me. I vowed that if I made it out alive, I would start carrying an old-fashioned compass and learn to use the mapping software that some of the h
unters carried.
Andre’s signal was now somewhere to the left of me, so I decided that would be the path I took. It soon became clear this wasn’t the way we came before. A theory suddenly occurred to me and I signaled Isaac to follow me back to the staircase.
“Head back to the entrance.”
It only made sense that if the right hand corridor wasn’t a true dead end, then the left might also have a false wall that led to a staircase. It was a longshot, but it was all I had. Thankfully, Isaac’s sense of direction was better than mine was, as I nearly passed the intersection in my hurry. As I ran up the stairs, I heard noises above and paused. I nearly fainted with relief when I heard a familiar voice.
“It’s Lucy!” Lance yelled to the others. “I’ve found…Oh shit!”
I glanced at Lance, questioning his sudden horrified confusion as he noticed Isaac climbing the stairs behind me. I reached the second level just as Ingrid came around the corner and stopped short.
“Oh my god,” she gasped.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
No one answered, but they didn’t have to. The next person in their party to come around the corner was, or at least looked like, Isaac.
Chapter 31
“He knew the security questions,” Johnny said with a nervous glance toward the Isaac that showed up with them.
“Which ones?” the Isaac with me asked. “Your favorite beer is made by a guy you hated in high school. Saba doesn’t like French toast. Lance’s name was supposed to be Stewart. Would you like me to continue with the people who aren’t here?”
Johnny’s expression confirmed that his Isaac apparently had the same answers. Of course, it was possible that Bluebeard had either tortured that information out of someone or had been tracking us for longer than we thought.
“Where did you find him?” I asked.
“Not long after you disappeared,” Lance replied. “We found another hallway full of rooms and when he heard us, he started tapping on the pipes. You were right, shooting a lock isn’t efficient, but it did work. What happened to you?”
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 59