by Tanya Lisle
Mac led the way through the hole in the wall and over the rubble. Section I was a maze of halls and random rooms that were once used for experiments that had long since been abandoned. Half of the doors didn’t even lead into rooms at all, but other hallways that required completely separate sets of clearance.
Ed’s strategy here appeared to be to just seal off every door in the section she could, which meant that all they had to do was follow the ruined remains of the doors left in their wake. Many of their choices led to rooms instead of new halls, which Mac figured slowed them down.
The sound of a small explosion up ahead told them where to go and they rushed toward it, finding the small group of three running through the newest hole in the complex to the next hall. Mac and his team rushed in after them.
They were in a large, completely vacant white room. All three men turned back to them and dropped their weapons before putting their hands up. One of them stepped forward, shaking his head and looking furious. “You’re making a mistake,” he said.
Mac nodded to the three men he brought and they moved forward to detain the last of the invading party. He’d rather kill them, but that wasn’t how it was done in the Janus Complex, no matter how much he tried to change it. “I don’t think we are. But please. I could use a laugh.”
“I’m not with them,” he said. “They wanted your shit. I’m after her. She’s here.”
“Hope you’re not fond of your dick if you plan on talking like that.”
“The sibyl is here!” He pulled away from the restraints being put on him, but he didn’t get far. “I know she is! Just let me kill that bitch and I don’t give a shit what you do to me after that.”
One of Mac’s men raised the blunt end of his rifle, but Mac held up a hand to stop him. Now he was curious. There was something about it that sounded familiar.
He got a better look at the guy. His dark skin was thick and leathery while his hair had gone white long ago, though still looked full. He looked to be in his fifties, which would be older than anyone Mac had ever known who lived regularly in the haze. He had his fair share of scars on his face and a look in his eyes like a man who had been working a lifetime to finally murder someone who had wronged him.
Mac was inclined to believe that he wasn’t with the rest on the condition of his equipment alone. The body armour was in good shape, indicating that either he hadn’t seen much combat or he was good enough to not get hit. He also appeared to be the only one carrying explosives. There were still several left over, though his men were already removing them.
“Sibyl?” Mac asked. He’d heard that term before.
The man’s eyes were a startling green as he narrowed them up at Mac. “She’s here. Just let me at her. She needs to pay for everything she’s done. Kill me after, but she’s got to die first.”
“Maybe you tell me what the fuck you’re talking about and I don’t take out your tongue,” Mac said.
“Don’t you know?” he asked. “That girl. She tells you everything that’s going to happen. She tells you everything you want to know. And then she takes everything away from you. You end up on that damn mountain again and that mountain leaves you behind when it leaves. And no, they don’t all die. She was right about that. It would be better if they did, but it’s too late for them already. And you watch and you go back and-”
Mac struck him hard enough with the blunt end of his gun to knock him out. “That was useless,” he said, turning to the other two. “Either of you want to tell me what this Sibyl is?”
They both shook their heads. “Guy was always nuts,” one of them muttered. “Said he was from Argentina. Kept obsessing about some disappearing mountain.”
“Then why work with him?”
“He showed up one day with explosives and a location. We’re starving, man! We need everything we can get!”
“Deal with them,” Mac told his men, walking away and heading back to the clean up. There would be plenty of time to figure out what the hell that guy was talking about later. For now, he had to see how many of his own men had fallen.
Chapter 12
Ed jumped awake at the pounding on the door, head whipping around to the monitors around her. Section I had sealed itself off and the rest of the Janus Complex looked like it was already back to business as usual. The pounding continued and she looked over to the monitor showing her outside the door, Mac pounding on it and looking like he was ready to break it down if he had to.
Wiping the drool off of her chin and brushing her hair back into place, she went to the door. She narrowly missed Mac hitting her in the face as she opened it. “Whoa, pull back there,” she said, suddenly feeling much more alert than a moment ago. “Fight’s over. Relax.”
“The hell have you been?”
“Here,” Ed said. “Why? You need something?”
“Need some- Check your damn phone!”
As much as Ed would rather go back to sleep, she turned back to the counter and picked up her phone. The light flashed regularly and she turned it on to see that she had 57 missed messages in the form of calls and texts over the course of the last five hours.
She could have used a much longer nap than that.
A message from Liah was the oldest and Ed looked up to the corner of the room. A camera was on, the red light visible from the dark corner, and she nodded to it before she left the room. Mac stayed out of her way as she closed the door, Ed continuing to walk down the hall and back into the main complex as she scrolled through her phone.
“It looks like everything’s under control,” Ed said. Liah had apparently been watching and managed to take over Iris while Ed took a nap. Arrangements were already underway for the two of their own who had died in the fight. Seventeen were in the Medical Wing with injuries but they looked like they would pull through. There were also several messages from Mac.
“So you have three you took alive,” Ed said, stifling another yawn. Maybe if Mac had actually managed to smack her in the face she’d be more awake. “And you haven’t sent any of them to the hospital yet? Congrats.”
“They don’t know anything,” Mac said. He sounded disappointed. “There’s one, though. There’s something he said before. I think he’s met our newest little refugee before.”
It took Ed a minute to figure out what he was talking about. “Snow?” she asked. “Did this guy come from Mystery Mountain too?”
Mac shook his head. “There’s just something about it, but-”
“Oh,” Ed said, frowning at her phone. “You did send one of them to the hospital. You hit him a little too hard, I’m guessing, when you knocked him out.”
She could feel Mac’s glower on her back, but she didn’t bother to say anything else on the matter. There were still messages to listen to as well as texts to check and she was still filtering through everything. For the most part, they consisted of people checking in to say that everything was back to normal, which was a relief. With a little luck, she might be able to just talk to a few people and then get some proper rest before dealing with everything else.
Her phone rang, Liah’s name showing up on the display. She answered it and put it to her ear, hoping she didn’t sound as tired as she felt. “Hey,” Ed said. “Thanks for dealing with Section I.”
“You sound like you still need sleep,” Liah said, her voice muffled through a thin layer of static.
“I do,” Ed said. “Where are you?”
“The only place I can get a signal through to Upstairs. The roof. Some time this week, you really need to get on that.”
“It’s on the list. That can’t be all.”
“What’s the deal with that Snow chick?”
“What?”
“She said you were getting attacked, so I decided to take a look,” Liah said. She sounded more nervous now, the static getting louder as she got quieter. Ed could almost see her looking around for someone listening in. “I asked her if she knew what was happening and she is just telling me everything that�
��s happening a couple seconds before I see it. I mean, I know there’s a delay for the feed to get down here, but I can’t figure out how the fuck she was doing it. And she doesn’t blink. I just… What is she?”
“I already told you what I know,” Ed said, wiping one eye with her palm. “We don’t know anything else about her yet. If you can get anything else out of her-”
“You’re going to have to take care of that.”
“What?”
Liah let out a frustrated grunt. “I don’t know how she did it, but she’s back Upstairs. I caught her on a camera heading towards the Medical Wing.”
“I’ll go deal with it. Thanks Liah.”
“You owe me. Come down for dinner sometime.”
“Bye Liah.” Ed hung up before she could respond, her mind already focused on the next problem. She didn’t have time to figure out how Snow got back up here or anything that Liah was worried about. She was much more concerned with Snow encountering this man who might know her and what might happen if they met. He’d already proven to be dangerous and Snow seemed to think that he was going to kill her. Even if any of that were true, there was still no telling what Snow planned to do either. They really had no idea what she was capable of.
“What’s going on?” Mac asked. Despite his heavy boots behind her, she forgot he was there.
“Snow’s back Upstairs,” Ed said, turning down the next hall toward the Medical Wing. “Looks like she might want a chance to talk to this guy before you do.”
“She’ll try to-”
“No,” Ed said firmly. The last thing she needed was Mac trying to get information out of someone right now. “Whatever you’re going to say, no. Section I needs cleanup. You and Security are officially in charge of that. This guy and whatever he knows will keep for another twenty four hours. Round up anyone who’s still able and at least get it cleaned up so we can organize for rebuilding.”
“And what are you doing?”
“My job.” Ed met Mac’s eyes and didn’t waver despite Mac towering over her. “Is there a problem?”
Mac backed off, scowl still etched into his face. He turned away and started to walk down towards Security in Section H when he stopped and turned back. “One last thing,” Mac said.
Ed was ready to punch him, but she knew she would fall over if she tried. “What?”
“What was the time?”
“1706.”
Mac nodded and said nothing else as he left.
Ed was grateful for that as she continued down to the Medical Wing. Just a few more hours, she told herself. A few hours, then I’m taking a week off to sleep.
***
Snow wasn’t difficult to find. She stood outside of the Medical Wing beside the door, looking ahead and not blinking. There was a look of contemplation on her face. She looked more like a statue than a person, her dress and hair the only things moving when someone walked past her and through the doors. The stars in her dress looked more vibrant today and moved more furiously than before.
Ed rubbed her eyes, telling herself that she was tired, and went up to Snow. She had no energy to fake a smile today. “How long have you been standing there?”
Snow looked away from her spot in the distance and at Ed. “Thirty six minutes.”
“Waiting for something?”
“You will say you want to keep an eye on me. It’s better if I didn’t go in ahead of you. I’ll cause problems if I do. Katima Grace is not happy with Clyde letting me-”
“That’s enough,” Ed said, stifling another yawn. “Fine. Come on.”
Ed smacked herself in the face before she walked through the doors to the Medical Wing, stopping at the front desk and leaning over the counter. Behind it, Miranda’s red hair whipped back and forth as she looked from the computer screen to the tablet, fingers moving across the keyboard. It was more work than Ed had seen her doing in a very long time.
“Hello Miranda,” Ed said.
“Not right — Oh, it’s you,” Miranda said, looking up. “We’re short on a lot and I can’t get these orders through to Downstairs.”
“I’ll look into the connection as soon as I can.”
“We need it ASAP.”
Of course they did. “Iris, location of Liah Bergstrom.”
Ed checked her phone. Liah was still in the server room, thankfully. She started to move her fingers over the screen with her thumb, gesturing to Miranda with her other hand. “The order done?” she asked.
Miranda handed her the tablet and Ed placed both devices on the counter. She was too tired to work both devices at the same time, so she focused on the tablet first, getting the order off of the tablet and onto her phone before sending it down to Liah from her own device.
“You look like shit, Ed,” Miranda said as she worked.
“Thanks,” Ed said. She passed the tablet back to Miranda and picked her phone back up as she got a message back from Liah. “They’ll send it up as soon as they get everything together,” Ed told her. “Anything else?”
“Nope. I think everyone’s got it from here.”
Ed nodded and walked past the desk, looking down at her phone and moving her fingers over the screen. A moment later, she knew where the room with an armed guard on it was, located down the hall from where they were keeping Kitty. The whole section was full of people from Section I, though it looked like several were recently vacated.
Glancing back at Snow, she decided that she could use a quick nap before she dealt with anything else and, even injured, Kitty would probably be able to babysit for a few minutes.
She turned down the hall and knocked on the door to Kitty’s room. “You decent?” she called into it.
“No,” Kitty called back.
Ed let herself in, Kitty lying on the bed and looking positively miserable to be there. Ed saw her get thrown back by the blast and catch a couple bullets in the course of the fight, but she never so much as wavered until the end. David was the one that made her finally sit down. Blood soaked her side, all of it hers.
Kitty sat up now on her own, a bandage around her lower arm with no sign of red leaking through it and a shadow over her right shoulder. She shook her head. If she had the energy to be annoyed, she was fine. “It looks way less — Wow Ed, you look like crap.”
“I’m going to nap,” Ed said, sinking into one of the two chairs along the side of the wall. “Watch her. Tackle her if she tries to escape.”
“Can do.”
“You aren’t able to tackle anyone in your present condition,” Snow said.
“You want to run and test that theory?”
Ed folded her arms and dropped her head, drifting off to sleep. She just needed another fifteen minutes to get her head back in order and deal with everything else. There were people she had to call back and things to organize. They had to rebuild what the battle destroyed of Section I. The servers needed to be checked so that their communications between floors could resume. If Medical couldn’t place orders for supplies, they would have more issues than Ed cared to deal with.
The knowledge that there was still so much to do kept her nap far too short. The chair was not comfortable and, while she was tired enough to sleep there for a while, Kitty wasn’t great at staying quiet enough for Ed to remain asleep for long.
“Okay, how the hell do you know all this?” Kitty asked, her voice loud with amusement and wonder.
“I know many things,” Snow said.
Ed kept her eyes closed and head bowed, desperately grasping for a few more moments of rest that were quickly abandoning her.
“Then what’s Mac doing right now?”
“Supervising the disposal of the corpses. It’s… strange.”
“What is?”
Ed wasn’t sure she really wanted to keep sleeping now that she was thinking about corpses.
“They disappear after they go through the door. They’re still there, but they’re in so many pieces that they aren’t there anymore. It’s strange.”
Kitty laughed. “It only looks like that,” she said, talking in much the same way she spoke to children. “They don’t really disappear. It’s a… a modified particle bomb? Dave and Ed tried explaining it to me before. You put something into it and it breaks the thing apart into atoms or something and basically turns into goop that goes Downstairs. Downstairs, they take the goop and separate it out into chemicals or something that they can use to make stuff that we need.”
“They don’t call it goop.”
“Whatever it’s called. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t disappear. Nothing disappears in here. It just gets recycled.”
A moment of silence passed before Kitty spoke again. “I know what I said before, but that marked thing… Do I have one of those?”
“Don’t touch her, Snow,” Ed said, opening her eyes at last. She rubbed at them both, absently pulling her bangs back over her bad eye as she looked up at the pair of them.
Snow didn’t move any closer than Kitty’s bedside and made no move to reach over the bed as her eyes crawled over her. “You once were,” she said. “Your task is completed. You beat Ed and apprenticed with the excursion team.”
“So I beat you because of fate and not because you stayed up until 600. Always good to know.”
As much as Ed wanted to go back to sleep, she needed to see to everything first. There were people she needed to call back and messages to be answered. She needed to check things, though she couldn’t quite remember what those things were. There was probably more. She’d need to make a list.
Getting to her feet, Ed made her way for the door. “Get better soon,” she said. “Tomorrow if you can. I’d rather Mac not handle interrogations.”
“Where are you going?”
“Work.”
“Ed, it’s been fifteen minutes. You look like you need a couple days rest at least. You were in one of these rooms maybe two days ago.”
“As soon as everything’s handled.”
Ed left before Kitty had a chance to say anything else. She should call the Section Heads together for a quick meeting. After that, she could take a look at the server room to figure out what was wrong before she got some sleep. She was no good fixing things in this state, but she’d feel better if she could at least figure out what was wrong.