Her internal compass was none too precise, but something about the architecture and construction of these hallways reminded her of San Solano and the sloping halls beneath. But now that she thought about it, the Golmont building was situated within Parson’s Grove, too. She shuddered at the thought, hoping it was a mere coincidence. And yet the seeds of that coincidence had been planted. They were, without a doubt, within the very heart of NIDUS’s machine. What was that machine producing? What was it running on? She felt that familiar confusion and loss as she was again confronted by those questions. No matter how this intrepid rescue mission ended, she knew she would never have another chance to risk discovering those answers. Here in the heart of the NIDUS machine, it was all or nothing.
And with that, the two continued on, led by the impatient Leng cat, down the leftmost corridor and deeper into the abandoned tunnels that sank ever further with each step. As they ran, Kara wove and unwound her silk liberally, marking the path they’d come. And as they left the scent of their dad and the blood behind, something occurred to Spinneretta. The Instinct was alive in her; it was how the two of them had pinpointed Ralph’s location, after all. But the question that now surfaced in her mind was found in the smell of her father’s blood as it receded behind them.
Fifty percent. The laws of genetics held that about fifty percent of Ralph’s blood should have been common to his children. She could taste her own blood. She could taste Kara’s. She could taste her dad’s. Though the similarity was there, it was diminished, insufficient. And part of her was certain they were on the threshold of discovering why it was that she and Kara seemed to only share a quarter of their blood with their father.
Arthr fumbled as Annika dragged him away from Mark and the yellow-robed monster. His spider legs extended to catch his balance, and soon he was sprinting down the hallway. But even at his top speed—forged and tempered in the crucible of track and field—Annika continued putting strides between them. “Wait,” he choked out between deliberate breaths. “Where are we going?”
Only when they rounded another corner did she slow and allow him and Ralph to catch up. “This is the showdown. We’re going all in.” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled the dark frame of a gun free. Arthr recognized it at once: it was the Chiappa Rhino. “Think I can trust you to handle this?”
He skipped a breath and forced himself to nod. “Hell yeah! You can count on me!”
She pressed the gun into Arthr’s waiting hand. “I don’t know if you’re ready for it, but we’re going to need the backup, and I trust you with a gun more than Old Man Lunatic.” A few paces behind them, Ralph shook his head but didn’t break stride. “I hope you got all the practice you needed.”
Breath running on empty, head inflated by the responsibility thrust upon him, Arthr shoved the barrel of the revolver into a gap in his belt. “I swear I won’t let you down!”
“Better not, kid,” she said. “Our lives are riding on it.”
The three of them continued following the corridor along its bends and curves. Wherever a choice presented itself, Arthr deferred to Annika’s judgment. But after a series of tight turns, Arthr caught a glimpse of something shimmering near a vent cover. “Wait!” he called out.
Annika and Ralph stopped their strides, momentum carrying them into a cross-shaped intersection. “What is it?” Annika asked.
Arthr crouched over the streak of light that had caught his gaze, and he extended one of his spider legs to examine the silvery thread that bent around the corner and led an indeterminate distance ahead. The resistance it showed when he gave the line a tug implied it was wound taut. “This is Kara’s,” he said. “They must have gone down that way. Come on, we can still catch them.”
Annika grabbed him by the shoulder before he could charge off down the hall. “Hold your hooves, horse-boy.”
He snapped his head over his shoulder at her. “Come on, they could be in trouble!”
“And if they are, that’s not our concern.”
Arthr’s tongue froze, and he gave her an incredulous look that challenged her to repeat those words. When the severity of her gaze didn’t falter, he looked to his dad for support. He found only a vacuous expression.
“Look,” Annika said. “I’m worried about them, too. But we have bigger potatoes to peel right now. Mark told us to go after the Vault. If you want to get out of this place alive, then the Vault is our best shot to make that happen.”
“What the hell is the Vault, and why is it more important than saving Spins and Kara?”
“You’ve got things backwards if you think we’d be the ones saving them. As for the Vault,” she said, turning back down the main hall, “we’ll know what’s inside once we get there. Now come on. First we have to find the damn thing.”
The end of the sloping hall opened into a wide, circular room with corridors leading off in several directions. On the furthest wall, a large double-doored elevator stood sentinel over the room and its arms. Annika and the others stopped to catch their breath. She scanned the branch halls, cold air stinging her lungs. Eight corridors, each marked with a metal plaque over its threshold containing an indecipherable code unique from all the others. She coughed a little and righted her posture. “Alright then,” she said. “Which way looks the most forbidden?”
“They all look the same to me,” Arthr said, coughing a little himself.
“Wrong answer. Think outside the box, use your spider intuition. Which way feels the most familiar?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Beside them, Ralph was wheezing through his teeth. “The Chosen,” he said, “and the believer.”
Annika sighed. “Great, and now he’s broken again.” She pulled the speedloader from her pocket and began to twirl it about in her fingers. Each of the five bullets within was just heavy enough to defy expectations as she spun it. “Okay, okay, come on, think. If you were an evil vault, where would you be?”
“ . . . within mists white,” Ralph said, shaking his head. “How many. Dead stars.”
“Please stop talking. You’re not as lucid as you think you are.” She discarded her grievance, however, as there came a mechanical groaning from the far wall. The sound was distant, but it quickly grew louder and more distinct. After a brief metallic grinding, the sound stopped. The elevator doors on the far wall began to slide open. Annika snapped to attention. Through the growing gap, she caught sight of something yellow. “Arthr, support me!”
Annika’s right hand went to her Ruger while her left went to the knife strapped to her leg. Leaping forward, she bit back the pain of her still-unhealed arm. She flew between the opening doors and threw a high kick. Something crunched as her boot bashed across the face of the man standing in the center. The two men on his sides reacted and reached for their guns, but they were too slow. Annika twisted the man’s body about and laid her knife across his throat. Bringing her Ruger out from behind her man-shield, she took aim at the larger of the two remaining yellow-coats, both of which had trained their own pistols on her.
A cocky smile came over her, one she felt in her stomach and wanted more than anything to indulge in. “Evening, boys. Going somewhere?”
There was a click from the hall as Arthr cocked the Rhino and pointed it at one of the yellow-coats. And then a tense silence buzzed through the air, a silence only broken by Ralph’s incoherent muttering as he watched in a dazed stupor. Annika’s foot slid out to block the elevator doors from closing, but aside from that small movement there were only six graven statues.
Glaring at the coats, Arthr hissed between his teeth. “It’s you,” he growled.
The tallest man, with a dark complexion and broken nose, glared from Annika to the boy. “Hello, Anansi.”
Annika sighed a little as she gently scraped the blade of her knife against her captive’s skin. “Well, this is quite the predicament, isn’t it? I’d call this a Mexican standoff were it not so Peruvian in atmosphere. Now, how about you boys put your guns
away before any of us make any irreversible mistakes?”
“Go fuck yourself,” the shorter white man said. His pistol faltered a little as he shook in fear of her aim.
“Wait,” the darker man said. “You’re . . . ” For a moment, his lips massaged unspoken words.
“Wait nothing,” his comrade said, raising his gun again. “A woman and a child got nothing on you and me.”
But the darker man’s aim began to dip. He stared into Annika’s face. Slowly, he took one hand off his pistol and put his open palm toward her. “I’m going to put my gun down,” he said. “Alright? Don’t shoot, okay?”
“What?” the other man spat.
Annika rolled the blade of her knife in an impatient gesture. “If you’re gonna disarm, hurry it up, sweetie.”
“What are you doing?” her hostage choked out from beneath the blade. It sounded like her kick had filled his mouth with blood. “Help me you piece of shit!”
The man lowered his pistol to his side and reholstered it. Beside him, the other yellow-coat began to sputter. “Are you fuckin’ nuts!? What do you think you’re—”
“Put your gun down and show some respect,” the man said in a commanding tone. “This is the woman who killed Gauge.”
Everyone present stopped breathing at those words. Annika’s meat shield, too, ceased his tentative struggling.
“Her?” the shield choked out incredulously. “She’s the one who—?”
“Bullshit, nobody can kill one of those things,” the trigger-happy man said. “Tau and Phi fucking unloaded into one of those shits, and it walked away without a scratch. Those things are supermen. And you’re telling me that this, this woman killed one of ’em? Don’t fuck with me, Edgar, I ain’t so stupid as to believe that shit!”
Edgar ignored him, staring down the barrel of Annika’s revolver. “It’s true, isn’t it?” he said. “You killed him.”
Annika showed him a smirk. “I have a fan? I must be getting pretty rusty if I let someone get out of that house alive. Yeah, that’s right, I’m the one who killed him.”
Edgar shook his head a little, and the corners of his mouth twitched. “Drop your gun, Carl.”
The man by his side shook a little in disbelief, and after a moment of hesitation dropped his pistol to his side as well.
“There, not so hard, is it?” Annika said with a grin. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate getting a little information out of you in exchange for not blowing your heads off. Sound like a fair toll to you?” Nobody said anything, and Annika tentatively lowered her own gun, though she left her knife at her shield’s throat. “Now, tell me: where is the Vault?”
The men stared at her. It was the man named Carl who replied. “The Vault? You’re going to the motherfucking Vault? Jesus, you must have a death wish.”
“I didn’t ask for stand-up,” Annika said. “I asked for directions. Now I’ll ask you again: where is it?”
“If the Vault is the same place I think it is,” Edgar said, “you’ll find it on the lowest level of the complex. Below the excavations and the labs. I’ve only been down there once. If my memory’s still with me, the only way down there is the freight elevator in Sector Nine.”
“Sorry, I left my map at Tourist Information. How in the name of Lucifer do we get to Sector Nine?”
Edgar was quiet for a moment. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. “I don’t know what you think is going to happen if you go to the Vault, but getting in and out of the Vault would be like filling Fort Knox with acid and trying to swim your way to safety. Once you get in, you’re not getting out.”
“Thanks for your concern,” she said. “Let’s try that again: where is Sector Nine?”
Edgar shook his head. “Listen to me. We may well be all that’s left of the Marauders. Us three, maybe two or three more hiding in closets and drowning in their own vomit. We’re not the ones you need to worry about. The Vault is tricked out with alarms. Fort Knox. If you go in there, it’s those robed fuckers that are going to come after you. Whatever they’ve got locked up in there, it’s important to them. They use some kind of shadow magic. As soon as you set foot in the Vault, they’re going to show up. And I do mean all of them.”
Annika smirked. “Good. Two birds with one stone.”
Edgar paused. “What are you planning on doing, exactly?”
“I’m going to kill them.”
Edgar and Carl exchanged glances. “You really think you can do that?” Edgar asked, a glimmer of hope shining in his eyes.
“Wouldn’t be going there if I didn’t,” she said. “That’s called common sense. Any other burning questions you need to get off your chest?”
“I don’t know what your plan is,” Edgar said, “but if you’re intent on going to war with those robed fucks, then let us help.”
Annika scoffed. “Oh, sure, no problem. Let me just turn my back and lead the way, I trust you won’t gun me down. You must think I’m pretty damned stupid.”
“I don’t blame you for not trusting us, but you need to understand something. We’ve been here for years. We were hired as some kind of private military force. Our circumstances were all different. For a lot of us, this was all we had. But we were prisoners here. Sworn to secrecy, unable to leave. We’ve all done some pretty terrible things in our time here, but that’s not the point. This isn’t a plea for forgiveness. Ever since Clearwater kicked it, things have gone from bad to heaping-bowl-of-flaming-cow-shit. Couple weeks back, six of us were fed to the freaks down in those caves.” He laughed a dry cackle. “There’s no one else left, you know. The rest of us—four dozen men—are all gone. Because of them. Knowing that, you think that we give a shit about helping them?”
Annika examined his eyes for some sign of contradiction.
“I’m just going to come out and say what I think we all know,” he said. “Even if we try to leave, those robes are going to kill us. They’ve killed for less than that before. Like everyone else before us, we’re dead men. I can’t speak for Carl and Ronald here, but I’m not planning on just waiting with my thumb up my ass for them to get hungry again. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die fighting. So, here it is: if you’re going to the Vault with the intention of fighting them, I’m going with you. If that’s not in the cards, then you can find Sector Nine on your own. What’ll it be?”
When she found no hint of deception, she glanced at the other man, who looked like a deer in headlights. “Interesting. I guess I’ll bite. You three get a temporary reprieve. But here’s a friendly warning for ya: if one of you thinks to try and backstab Annika Crane,” she narrowed her eyes and showed them a sharp grin, “I’ll kill all three of you before the first shell casing hits the ground. You got that?”
Edgar gave her a confident nod, and Carl imitated the gesture, though his eyes were filled with fear.
“Very well,” she said, knife still hovering at Ronald’s jugular. “You’re still walking ahead of us, though. And don’t you dare let me catch you glancing backward. Lead the way.”
Chapter 37
The Depths
Nal lunged for Mark, a wet snarl on its blood-soaked lips. Mark leapt backward to avoid the blow, spreading his arms to keep his balance. Nal answered by using his forward momentum to throw a wild uppercut toward his jaw, only to miss and slam the borrowed fist against the metal wall. The force of the attack buckled a section of the plating and sent a loud ringing through the corridor. Nal’s eyes grew wide and monstrous. “You can’t escape your fate, Warren. You can’t escape the promised end! Your magic will fail you!”
Mark scoffed, but had no time for a retort; the two robes behind flew toward him as well, their jaws unhinged and slavering. His magic-enhanced muscles and reflexes reacted, throwing him forward and out of range of the two huge attacks. Like the wall, the floor panels buckled and ruptured, spilling forth a cluster of insulated wiring and corrugated tubes. He leapt ahead, determined not to allow himself to be surrounded. Nal spun about a
nd, with a grotesque shout of fury, threw his fist in a wide horizontal arc. Mark crouched out of range, and then sprang away as Rith closed in with a leaping strike that collapsed another section of flooring.
Even as puppets, the Vant’therax wielded unbelievable strength. Mark spat a mouthful of saliva to the grating as he slunk backward, bringing the yellow robes into a line in front of him. Magic sparked in his palms. Can’t get ahead of myself, he thought. No Flames. Not yet. Not unless I really need them.
Nal gave him a skeletal grin, and then all three of the Vant’therax advanced. A flurry of blows rained around him, but his artificially enhanced speed opened the distance. The strikes fell upon the metallic walls and floor, and the force of each hit rattled the corridor. Mark ducked to the side and drew a singularity of magic into his palm. He dodged one more gigantic blow from Dyn, and then he thrust the spell into the Vant’therax’s arm. The singularity erupted. The air in front of him exploded into a wall of primal resonance. All three of Nemo’s mouthpieces shrieked as the blast washed over them, sending them sprawling to the floor. Blood splattered against the grated flooring and the walls from Dyn’s mangled arm. Dyn, shrieking in agony, clutched one hand to the exposed bone, where unraveled muscle and nerve tissue twisted in unnatural spirals.
But before Mark could press his advantage, Nal and Rith were upon him. He blurred to the side, narrowly avoiding a chitin spike from Rith that embedded itself in a steel door. Mark regained his footing just in time to dodge another blow from Nal. Air swirled in Mark’s palm, and he swept his hand in a crescent. Spacetime ruptured, and a geyser of blood sprayed from Nal’s arm as the psychic blade cleaved through flesh and bone. A baleful shrieking from all mouths, but the beasts would give no moment of reprieve. Nal was upon Mark before its severed arm had hit the ground.
The shadow of the attack fell over Mark, and as soon as it did the Flames engulfed him. The dimensional fabric inverted. The teleportation spell completed just in time, for he reappeared to the sight of Nal’s fist smashing through the verdant sparks he’d left behind. He took a deep breath and slunk back a step toward the mouth of a connected laboratory. That was close, he thought. I must be more careful.
Helixweaver (The Warren Brood Book 2) Page 45