He turns his head toward me, his oxygen mask now around his neck. "I can't believe you two just tried killing us," he croaks out. "Again."
I gently pull his wrists out of the straps and rub the blood flow back into his hands. "Sorry. There was no other way."
"You've done this before?" He slowly stands up, holding on to the wall for support.
I look at Zion with a smirk. "Yes. The last time we got grounded for a month."
Zion pulls open the creaky gate. "We're not safe yet, we need to get to the next lift."
Derek blanches. "Another one?"
I take Derek's arm and urge him forward. "Yes, three levels, remember? They separate the entrances to each level instead of having one long lift down for safety measures."
Derek swears under his breath as we walk quickly down another rocky tunnel.
I grin despite the situation. "As security I would think you'd appreciate our safety measures." I squeeze his arm.
"If you consider dropping human bodies hundreds of meters in seconds security measures, then I'd hate to see what you consider dangerous around here."
Zion stops suddenly in front of us, and Derek and I have to skid to the side to avoid hitting him.
"I think you're about to find out, Paz."
I look around Zion toward the lift and my breath catches in my throat. Thick, dark, smoke is roiling up around the gaps between the lift and the rock hole. The smoke lingers at the top of the rock ceiling, creeping toward us like dirty fog.
14
Midpoint - Deadly Discovery
I can smell the smoke now. It's not the smell of a mechanical fire, which is the most common type in a mine. It's more like the smell when the mechanics on starships have to clean out the biofuel exhaust ports. Burnt energy.
"Weapons." Zion and I say at the same time.
"What? Down here?" Derek turns toward me.
I pull on Zion's sleeve. "This proves we're on the right path. We need to get down there now, before everything disappears again. We've had too many deaths already."
The muscles in Zion's jaw flex. "You know we can't take the lift." He points to the smoke filled area.
I plant myself in front of him. "Yes, I see that. I also know we have another option."
Zion's gaze flicks to Derek. "You sure?"
"Yes. Now."
"Think he can handle it?" Zion makes eye contact with Derek.
"Yes," I say louder. I tighten the straps on my backpack. "Besides, we don't have any other choice."
"I'm standing right here. What do you think I can't handle?" Derek steps toward Zion.
I step in between the two. "Which way, Zion?"
Zion frowns but nods down a dark tunnel off to our right. I grab Derek's hand and start running in the dim light. Soon Zion passes us, his face a chiseled mask of concentration. Derek looks sideways at me but I ignore him and just hurry forward without stumbling over any loose rock.
Soon Zion stops at a rusty, metal railing. There are no lights here and the darkness is so complete I can only see a hand's length from me.
He reaches up high on a ledge and pulls down an old leather sack. He starts pulling items out of it.
I stop Derek several feet before the railing.
"All right, are you going to tell me what we're doing?" He keeps a hand on my arm in the darkness.
Zion shoves a bundle of rope at Derek. "We're jumping."
Derek freezes with his hands wrapped around the jumble of ropes. I place my hand on his shoulder. "Not exactly jumping. More like rappelling."
"Yes, that sounds much better." Derek pulls his face close to mine. "Is this payback for all the teasing at school? You're going to tie me up and push me off a cliff?"
I laugh and pry the bundle out of his hands. Expertly I start organizing the equipment. "No, it's just the only way we can get down to the lower levels now that the lift has been compromised." I nod my head in the direction we just came.
"And you think I can do this? This sounds worse than the whole freefall thing." Derek whispers, keeping an eye on Zion who already has his harness on and is attaching his equipment to hidden anchors shadowed in the dark rock.
"Yes, I do. I'll tie you with me and talk you through it," I whisper back. I lean close to Derek and tighten the harness around his body. Then I do the same for myself.
"Isn't there any other way?" Derek asks, his eyes trying to focus down the dark pit on the other side of the railing.
I forcefully turn him toward me. "No. We have to do this now. We can't afford any other miners getting hurt or killed for whatever secret lies down there."
Zion hands me a rope and I attach it between Derek and me. Then Zion climbs over the railing and stands on the ledge watching us.
I pull Derek close. "Just follow me. I've done this lots of times."
He frowns. "Well I haven't. There's no jumping down into holes when you live on a space station."
I grin. "True. Come on." I climb over the railing and wait for Derek to follow. His jaw is clamped tight and his knuckles are white as he hangs on to the creaky railing.
I look to Zion. My eyes are getting used to the dark and I can see that he's still smiling at Derek's discomfort. "Straight down? No ledges in the way?"
He nods. "How did you know I would have this setup still here?"
I wink at him. "Because a good miner is always ready for anything."
He grins and jumps backwards, his rope tightening as he guides his feet down the rock wall and disappears into the darkness.
I turn to Derek. "You can do this. Just lean back and plant your feet on the wall as you go down. The rope will keep you close to the wall and I'll make sure you don't go too fast. Ready?"
He shakes his head no. I shrug. "I'm not leaving you up here for the galactic security to find, so you don't have a choice." I lean backward, tilting Derek with me since we're attached.
He scrambles for a better hold of the railing.
"Let go Derek. Trust me." I put as much emphasis in my words as I can.
He looks down at me, his breathing coming too fast. I reach up and pull the oxygen mask back over his mouth and nose. Then I grab his hand and pull him down with me.
Despite having to calm Derek a few times, the descent doesn't seem to take very long. At least for me it doesn't. My heart is racing and my adrenaline is pumping from the feeling of freedom as we lower ourselves down into the dim, warm light at the bottom.
I'm sure Derek has other thoughts about being forced to rappel down an old mining shaft.
I take off our gear at the bottom and I place my hands on either side of Derek's face. He's shaking slightly. "You still with me?"
His look of pure terror softens a bit but he still remains quiet. I plant a quick kiss on his lips. Working in security I'm sure he's been in dangerous situations before, so I'm confident he'll be all right. Eventually.
Zion has finished stashing the equipment and is already heading down one of the side corridors, so Derek and I hurry after him.
The air here is stagnant, but no smoke. We start jogging when we hear shouting. Up ahead a faint glow appears and Zion slows us down. The faint smell of energy weapons reaches us, along with another smell that I'm very familiar with which chills me to the bone.
I let go of Derek and stop Zion. "Wait," I whisper. "Do you smell that?"
Zion looks at me and nods. "Decomp."
"If someone was killed in this attack, there's no way we'd smell decomp already," I whisper back.
"What’s wrong?" Derek comes to stand next to us.
"You remember the pods on the Tempest?"
He nods, his face paling. Derek was with me when we found the whole crew of the Tempest crammed into escape pods.
"There's something really wrong here. Do you want to stay here in the tunnel while we go check it out?"
Derek's face clouds over. "No way. I helped you with those bodies. I can be of use now. Let's go."
I glance at Zion who looks doubtful, but we
turn and keep to the shadows. As we get to the mouth of the tunnel we flatten ourselves against the rough rock wall. There are voices shouting at one another, but they don't sound near us.
Zion is the first to peek out into the main room. He freezes in place, not moving. I place my hand on his shoulder and look around him, using him as a sort of human shield.
I shove my mouth into Zion's shoulder to keep from making noise at what we see. Zion's mouth is wide open, as are his eyes. But he too is soundless. Heavens help us.
About a meter up the walls a dozen or so men are shackled to the rock, surrounded and attached to machines I've never seen before. The men are probably miners from the type of clothing they're wearing. They look to be asleep or dead. But what's most disturbing isn't all the small tubes penetrating their bodies, but the one large flexible tube attached to the back of their skulls that snakes upward into the ceiling.
A strangled sound from Derek breaks me out of my horrified stupor.
I pull back into the tunnel and press myself into the cool rock. Zion and Derek do the same.
"What the Hades was all that?" Derek whispers hoarsely as he bends over his knees.
I take a couple of deep breaths and lean back around the corner to take a better look. There are a few men, space pirates by the awful logo sewn on their outer jackets, attaching charges beside each body, while several galactic guards look on. Anger burns inside me.
I force myself to look above each body and see that there is a perfectly round hole cut into the rock. Most of the holes are empty, but the one nearest us has a machine shaped like a snake blocking the hole. The tube from the man below it is attached to the bottom of the machine and is quivering. My heart races. I pull myself back into the tunnel and motion for Derek and Zion to follow.
We go down far enough into the tunnel that I don't feel like we can be heard if we whisper. "Derek, this is the piece of the puzzle we've been missing at all the other scenes." I look to Zion to explain. "Every time we've gotten down into one of the mines, it's been blown up, and everything except a few pieces of metal turned into shards can be found. Our investigation only went as far as to who was doing the attacks, not what this research is all about."
"Well let's go get our proof," says Derek. His shoulders are tense and his color has returned.
I lay a hand on his arm. "They're setting charges. Getting ready to destroy the evidence."
"That 'evidence' is the bodies of my fellow miners," growls Zion. He straightens and starts to take a few steps toward the cavern.
I grab tightly onto Zion's arm and pull him back. "Wait. I know they're your family. But remember that the EPL is involved in this. We have to be careful."
Zion clenches his mouth shut and continues to stare me down.
I quickly use the opportunity to explain. "This is the part that we didn't know before — that they're now using live people in this research. We thought it was purely AI tech gone wrong. This is the missing piece. We assumed the reason they had so many failed experiments going on around the galaxy is that they had some sort of issue that might've had to do with the AI's emotions getting in the way. These people want the AI to become like our most experienced miners who are able to use a kind of sixth sense to be able to locate the best minerals in a mine. This is something that miners learn from generations of living and working in mines. But something went wrong with each of their experiments, and it looks like the people involved got desperate."
"And," Zion interjects, "now they're using live people."
"You think they're all still alive?" Derek asks, his arm brushing up against mine.
Zion and I look at each other. "Not all of them. Because of the decomp smell there must be some that have been dead for a while. But there are a few in there that the tubes are still operational — giving them nutrition, oxygen, and waste removal. The bodies are being kept alive, but I'm not sure about the effect on their brains. We need to get in there and check this out."
"Let's go then," says Zion quickly.
"We need a plan first, Z. There are troops in there with energy weapons and they're setting charges. We don't want to get caught or blown up."
"I second that one," says Derek beside me.
Zion turns away, an angry expression on his face. He lets out a quiet growl and hangs his head down as he struggles to get control over his emotions.
I place my hand on his back. "Do you still do hours with the forward crews?"
His head whips up. "Yes. Why? What do you have in mind?"
"What do the forward crews do?" asks Derek.
Zion straightens and looks right at Derek. "They blow rock up."
The lines between Derek's eyebrows deepen again as he looks at me. "Are you planning on blowing something up?"
"No. We'll wait until they all leave and Zion and I will disarm all the charges. Then we'll have at least a few minutes to investigate before the pirates realize their charges didn't blow." I look to Zion for confirmation. He nods, a grim expression on his face.
"So you know how to blow stuff up too?" Derek asks me.
I nod. "When you grow up in a mine you learn about all aspects of the mining operation. Not much use for it on a space station though."
"Very peligroso, dangerous, Bren. Then what do we do?" Derek asks, easily accepting somehow in this crazy situation that his girlfriend can blow rocks up.
I wink at him. "I'm not sure. We'll think of something." Then I hurry past him toward the cavern.
The three of us watch as the rest of the charges are set. The galactic security troops are the first to leave, hurrying down one of the other tunnels.
"How are they getting back up top if the lift is surrounded by smoke and fire?" Derek asks right next to me, his breath tickling my ear.
"They're the ones that set the energy weapons off, they probably have special masks to get through the lingering toxic smoke." I step closer to Derek's warmth.
"They created the perfect exit plan." Derek's face clouds over as he watches the troops disappear down the far tunnel, his arm tightly around me. I'm not sure if he's trying to comfort himself or me as I stare at the men hanging on the walls.
15
Exterminating the Evidence
My muscles are strung tight as the three of us crouch near the mouth of the tunnel. The air is sticky warm and is thick with the mixture of energy weapons, machinery, and decomp. Back on Delta station we had dozens of emergency and hospital staff to deal with injuries after the pirate attack. Now as I stare at the miners hanging on the walls in silent horror, I realize I might not be able to save any of them. Even if there are a few that survived the intrusive attachments cut into their bodies, there's no way with just Derek, Zion and me that we could get them help in time.
I blink back hot tears.
"All right, it's clear," whispers Zion as he reaches out to squeeze my shoulder. He leaves the cover of darkness and creeps into the cavern.
My heart races as I follow him into the open, Derek right behind me.
I help Zion quickly disarm all the charges as Derek stands watch. "Do you think we got them all?" I ask.
Zion looks around the cavern, at his friends’ bodies hanging on the walls, the equipment all around them, and piles of boxes in the middle of everything. "I think so. Maybe while we check out the first body Derek can poke around the piles of supplies in the middle to make sure we didn't miss any charges there?"
Derek nods, jealousies forgotten in face of the danger and the horrors we face. As he walks over to the supplies I see his security training kick in. His stance loosens and his eyes roam over everything in his path. I relax knowing he'll catch something if we missed it.
I turn back toward the body that still has an AI machine attached above it. I'm not sure what I was expecting the AI diggers to look like, but this one is bigger than I imagined.
Zion goes around the room and checks the other miner's vitals. The one in front of me looks like he hasn't been hooked up to the machines long. His sk
in color is still good, and the fluids are pumping through his body smoothly. I step as close to him as the machines surrounding him will let me.
The cord leading from the miner's skull is flexible and attaches to the center of the AI machine. I reach up to pull on the tube to see how attached it is. It pulls out a few inches from the AI. This assures me there must be kilometers of retractable tubing in order to burrow deep into the rock and still remain in contact with its host. The body stays attached to all the machines down here while the tube unwinds inside the AI as it burrows farther and farther into the rock.
The miner's face is centimeters from mine as I lower my hand, and his eyes flutter open. I stifle a scream and step back, my hand over my mouth. I wasn't expecting this miner to move. Usually the dead stay that way in my line of work.
Zion rushes over to me. "What is it, B?"
I just point to the miner, whose eyes are still open, but unseeing.
"Just a reflex, B. I checked all the others and whoever did this cut their spinal cords completely in order to attach them to these machines." Venom flows dark from his voice.
"So we can't save any of them?" I ask quietly, closing my eyes.
Zion wraps an arm around me. "No." Emotions choke his words. "I found more miners thrown in a pile just down another branching tunnel. That's where the smell came from. They've been running this experiment for at least a few days. In the heat the decomp is setting in fast."
Anger rises again inside of me. I look back up into the miner's dead eyes. "This all started because of something Mom was working on, Z."
"You know she would never do this to anyone." Zion's face is twisted into a mask of grief.
I step out of his embrace and face him. "No, she would never do this. But the people running these experiments took one of her ideas and twisted it. We have to somehow make this right."
"Are you sure this comes from her ideas?" Zion is looking at me strangely. I've told him about everything we've found. I tilt my head as I study him.
Delta Fringe Series Boxset: Books 1-3 Page 45