Quinn stepped over to Blake and looked down his arm. Suddenly, the missing row of trees became embarrassingly obvious to him. He gasped. “Oh wow, you’re right!” He looked around again. “Wait, the trees are gone!”
Blake nodded, his face awash with disbelief. “I think they cut them up and got rid of them.”
Quinn nodded. “That’s definitely weird, because I’ve seen storm-fallen trees stay in the woods for years. You know what’s creepier though? Who’s the they?”
“I have no idea,” Blake said. “But I bet Victor Kraze knows.”
A feeling of unease settled over Quinn. “Should we leave?” Now I’m not sure if I want to go through with this.
“Dude, we didn’t drive three-and-a-half-hours up here to turn around and drive three-and-a-half-hours back to Portsmouth empty-handed. We’ve got a couple hours up here, at most.”
“You’re right, you’re right. This is just getting weirder, that’s all. Okay, let’s go. You know where this is? I don’t want to get lost this time. It’s not as easy to see where things are this time.”
“All we have to do is follow the empty row of trees back to the trail. We won’t get lost, I promise.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Let’s do it.”
Blake led the way again as the best-friends retraced their steps through the forest, occasionally seeing small, straight lines of fresh sawdust. “Looks like they put tarps down wherever they could to minimize the sawdust and leave no evidence behind.”
“Whoever they is did a really good job,” Quinn said. “You can tell people have been walking around though, there’s all kinds of tramped leaves and ferns. They might have been careful to remove the trees, but they were careless with their presence.”
❖
Victor
“Sir,” a security guard said, knocking at the open door. “One of the new motion sensors has been tripped. We’re going to check it out, but I thought you’d like to know. Looks like a couple of teenagers are exploring the woods again.”
Victor Kraze looked up from the laptop he was working on. “Two teenagers?”
“Yes, two boys.”
“Do you have them on video?”
“I believe so. One of the new tree cameras we installed detected the motion.”
“Don’t do anything. Show me the video feed first.” Victor stood and followed the guard to the security room across the hall from his office.
“Back up tree-cam four’s footage by five minutes,” the guard instructed the one manning the complex security system.
“Sure.”
Moments later, two bodies zipped backward in reverse. Then, normal playback resumed and they watched two teenagers pass by the hidden tree camera.
“Can you zoom in on their faces?” Victor asked.
“Yup.” The guard at the console tapped a few buttons and the video feed looped back and replayed, zoomed in and focusing on the boy’s faces.
Victor smiled when he recognized Quinn and Blake. “Tell everyone to stand down. I need to see what these boys are capable off, and I want no interference of any kind. Let them go wherever they want. If any of your personnel sees them, they are to ignore them and go the other way. If they bump into them, they should play nice and tell the boys to scram but not chase them away or bring them in. Keep the cameras rolling, though. I’ll be watching from my office.”
“Sir, what about the conversion chamber?”
“You heard me,” Victor snapped.
The two guards looked at each other and shrugged. One of them picked up a radio and began relaying instructions to the other security teams.
Victor turned and walked back to his desk, the corner of his lip pulling upward.
Excellent…
❖
Quinn
Several minutes later, the boys made it to the end of the fallen line of trees and stopped. Quinn looked left and pointed. There’s the entrance.
The lichen- and moss-covered concrete tunnel entrance, with its weathered Keep Out sign, looked just like he remembered.
“Still not meant for us,” Blake said, smiling wickedly. “Right?”
“Of course not. Here, grab some flashlights.” Quinn turned his back to Blake, who reached over and unzipped the backpack. After pulling out two LED flashlights, he zipped the backpack up and handed one to Quinn.
Quinn instinctively checked his cell phone; it had no service. “Ready?” he asked, feigning a smile. I’m having second guesses about this, but as long as I’m with you, I’ll be okay.
Blake winked at him. “Come on, chicken.” The boys walked down the stairs and made their way into the tunnel. This time, their super-bright flashlights illuminated the tunnel and exposed all the creepy looking roots, cracks, and water seepage they had missed from their first trip into the tunnel using only Blake’s cell phone flashlight.
“Nobody must know this is out here,” Quinn whispered.
“Why?”
“There’s no graffiti anywhere in here. Nor is there any on the concrete box thing.”
“Good point.”
As they walked over the old wooden ties that connected the rails of the mining car tracks, the tunnel’s darkness settled in behind them. The air became cooler as the boys descended toward the familiar metal door that led into the strange chamber, their flashlights illuminating the way.
“I don’t hear it this time,” Blake whispered over his shoulder.
“Hear what?” Quinn hissed.
“Remember last time, all that thrumming machinery?”
“That’s right. The silence makes it more ominous,” Quinn said, shivering briefly.
Moments later, the large, rusting door blocked their path. The boys turned off their flashlights and Blake pulled on the door knob. With a faint scratching sound, it opened. A dim blue light illuminated the room. They stepped in cautiously, looking around for signs of life. When they saw none, Blake clicked on his flashlight and Quinn let go of the door. The old door closer hissed as it pulled the door shut behind them.
“It still looks like Cerebro,” Quinn said, pointing his unlit flashlight to the ceiling of the geometric chamber. At the center of the dome, the glowing blue-white ring on the conical silver thing with the three upside-down antenna arrays looked like it was off, but he could see faint pulses of blue-white light fan outward across the top of the dome and travel down the walls in the eight translucent tubes built in between the hexagonal panels that covered the sides of the octagonal chamber.
“Is this low-power mode or something?” Blake asked.
“Let’s find out,” Quinn asked. He walked over to the hatch in the floor and pulled it open. He shined his light down into the hole and then climbed down. “This is where those battery looking things were.”
“I’ll wait here,” Blake said.
When his foot hit solid ground, he stepped off the ladder and turned around. Instead of a plethora of green lights, only sparse red lights shone in the darkness. The tubes from the chamber above were barely providing any illumination. He clicked on his flashlight and swung it around the large room. He walked over to a battery and studied the readout.
“If they are batteries, I think they’re totally drained or barely recharged,” Quinn said loud enough for his voice to carry up through the hatch to Blake. “All of the batteries have red lights. Before, they all had lots of green lights. I think that indicates their charge status.”
“I wonder how long it takes this thing to charge?” Blake asked aloud.
Quinn shrugged, as if he were face-to-face with Blake. “No clue. There’s nothing down here but these battery things. I don’t see any other doors or trap doors, so, uh, I’m coming back up.” He pocketed his flashlight and climbed back up the ladder to the main floor of the cavern.
“I wonder if we drained it when we got zapped?”
“Well,” Quinn said, exploring what he could see in the strange chamber with his flashlight, “it was a lethal dose of zap. If they hadn’t resuscitated u
s, we’d be dead.”
“You think they do this to other people?”
Quinn shook his head and smiled, his wild imagination coming alive with possibilities “I think they were interested in us because we survived. I’m going to guess they didn’t blast anyone yet…but obviously I don’t have a clue. I agree with Mr. St. Germain—I think we were an accident.”
“Interesting theory.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Quinn said, smiling wickedly. He shined his light on the other door in the chamber.
“Let’s go see what’s on the other side. I bet it’s a secret control room?” Quinn asked, becoming giddy.
“Or another tunnel.”
Quinn chuckled. He crossed the room and shined his light on the door. Just like the one they came through, it needed to be pushed open from inside the chamber. “Let’s kill the lights. I’ll see if I can push it open first.”
“Okay.”
Then the boys clicked off their flashlights and listened for a moment. Using the dim blue light of the chamber, Blake walked over to Quinn. When Quinn was satisfied his enhanced hearing heard no voices on the other side, he put his hand and shoulder on the door and gently pushed. The door didn’t budge.
“Gotta push harder,” he whispered.
Blake nodded in the darkness.
Quinn pushed harder and felt the door move.
“Nice,” Blake whispered. “Nice and easy.”
Quinn pushed and the door slowly opened…half-an-inch, an inch, an-inch-and-a-half, two inches, three inches, four inches…Quinn stopped and listened. There were still no sounds. He peered through the open door and saw more rock. He pushed the door open more and stuck his head through the opening.
The room was empty.
Jackpot.
He pushed the door open and stepped through it, Blake close behind. “It is a control room of some kind,” Quinn said.
“Whaddaya know?” Blake commented. He clicked on his flashlight and started swinging the beam of light around from object to object.
Quinn did the same and stopped on a bank of old-looking beige computer banks, complete with blinking lights and large data tapes, stacked to one side of the room against a gray cinderblock wall.
“How do they keep these things running?” Quinn said, walking over to one of the refrigerator-sized computer banks.
“They must have bought all the spare parts,” Blake teased.
“Seriously, is this high-tech place running off ancient computer technology?”
He shined his light over a bank of dials with various metrics; next to it was a bank with two magnetic data tapes in standby mode—according to the yellow indicator bubble. Next to that sat three banks with rows upon rows of quarter-inch jack outlets each with red and green light bulbs. Only the third bank had old, cloth-covered wires connecting various outlets with no discernible rhyme or reason. Two smaller banks with unfamiliar dials and knobs sat next to those.
“All of these…computers…have power. This place is still running,” Quinn said softly.
“Those are computers?” Blake asked, whipping is light back and forth on the monstrous boxes.
Quinn shrugged. “Maybe they’re all parts to one computer, but I don’t know. I wasn’t born when these things were built.” He turned around and shined his light on the other side of the room. It was sparsely furnished with a desk, a long table, and several old, dusty chairs.”
Blake walked up to the table and reached out to touch it.
“Don’t!” Quinn hissed.
“What?” Blake asked, jumping back.
“Look at all the dust on this stuff. If you touch that, your fingers will disturb the dust and leave evidence we can’t get rid of. Someone’s clearly coming down here every so often to check on the big computer things. We don’t need to tip them off that we were here—especially since none of this furniture looks like it’s been used in years.”
Blake nodded. “Right. But how do they get down here?”
He shined his light around and found another tunnel opposite the door they entered in. They approached the archway that led to the tunnel and stopped to examine it with their flashlights. It was made of cinderblocks and not poured concrete like the one they had discovered that led them down into the chamber. About fifty paces away from them, a metal cage of some sort reflected back their light.
“Looks like the Batcave,” Quinn said.
“What?” Blake asked.
“It looks like the elevator in the Batcave that goes up to Wayne Manor.”
“Oh, right.”
The boys made their way toward the other end of the tunnel. The cage, they discovered, separated them from a very old elevator shaft that disappeared into the darkness above them. Several chains hung on the far side of the shaft. Three vertical columns of steel i-beams—one on the back off the shaft and one on each side of the shaft, reinforced with cross bracing attached to the rock walls, supported what Quinn assumed was the elevator car frame. The inside of each i-beam had gear teeth, so Quinn assumed the elevator car traveled by means of a geared mechanical system—maybe even a hand-crank.
A noise above him startled him.
“Turn your flashlight off,” Quinn hissed, clicking his off. Blake complied.
Voices above them grew louder until the sudden screech of metal made both boys jump.
Someone opened the elevator door up there.
Footsteps on metal traveled down the shaft as men’s voices echoed down with them. The metal screech echoed once more and a mechanical device whirred to life, causing the chains on the back wall to shake. Suddenly, the tunnel and the control room behind them were bathed in white utility lights that switched on.
Quinn and Blake looked at each other, surprised.
“Run!” they both whispered.
16 | More Unanswered Questions
Blake
BLAKE PULLED OPEN THE CONTROL room door and barely held it open for Quinn. He was almost across the chamber when he heard Quinn yelling at him in a loud whisper.
“Blake, stop!”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Blake screeched, his lungs heaving for air as his flight response kicked in. He spun around to look at Quinn. “Where the hell are you?” He asked, alarmed that Quinn was not right behind him.”
“I’m right here. I’m invisible.”
Blake yelped and jumped back. “Oh my gosh, you really are; I can’t see you!”
“That's the point. Oh look, you just disappeared,” Quinn exclaimed. “Dude! Now we’re both invisible!”
“You’re kidding,” Blake said. He looked down at his hand. He was partially transparent, but the flashlight he held in his hand was floating in mid-air.
Quinn brought his flashlight close to Blake’s hand. “Cool, huh?”
“I’m not fully invisible,” Blake said.
“You are to me,” Quinn confirmed. “I’m like, semi-see-through to myself, though.”
“You’re totally invisible to me.”
“Wicked. I assume this must be how we can see ourselves when we’re invisible to others or something. Weird how our clothes turned invisible, but the flashlights didn’t. What are you feeling?”
“Maybe objects have to be concealed, in your pocket. I can't see your wallet, phone, or keys. I also can't see your backpack. Otherwise, I'm feeling…I’m surprised as hell there are other people here.”
“Yeah, and our flashlights will be floating in midair if they see us.”
“We have time,” Blake said. “The elevator is still running.”
“I was surprised, startled, maybe scared…less scared than surprised. Maybe being surprised has something to do with becoming invisible.”
“This is fucking fantastic. I’m so going into the girl’s locker room when we get back to school.”
“Ew, dude. Gross.” Quinn said. “Have a little respect.”
“I’m kidding.”
“No, you’re not.”
“You're right.” Bl
ake said, smiling. I wonder if Quinn knows I’m smiling?
“Come on, let’s hide for a bit. If we leave, we’ll learn nothing.”
“Fine, but we’re invisible, why do we need to hide?”
“Because I'm not sure we can control this power yet. Do you want to take that chance?
“Good point. Where do we hide? All those lights turned on in the control room. There’s no way they’ll not see us in there.”
“Down there,” Quinn said, briefly shining his flashlight at the hatch that led to the battery room. “We can hide behind some of the batteries. There’s plenty of room down there. Trust me.”
After double-checking the hatch had no locking mechanism, the boys climbed down the ladder and hid behind two of the battery units. Above them, two men’s voices echoed through the chamber, but they couldn’t make out any of the words.
“My super hearing isn't working very well for some reason,” Quinn whispered. “Try to focus on listening better or something.”
“Okay,” Blake whispered back.
He focused on the muffled words and tried to block out the faint buzz of the energy moving through the chamber floor above them.
“This isn’t working,” Blake whispered.
“Shut up, you only tried for like two seconds.”
Blake exhaled in frustration and focused again. Why isn't this working?
The door screeched open and the voices became clear as the men entered the chamber. One of the men regaled the other about his latest sexual conquest.
“Gross,” Quinn whispered.
“I’ll check down here,” the man with sexual bravado announced to his partner.
Shit.
Blake closed his eyes and tried to remember what being surprised felt like. The dull tapping of boots on the metal ladder signaled the man was descending into the battery room.
A moment later, Blake saw a flashlight beam swinging around the room.
“Nothing, all clear.” the man said loudly, startling Blake. If I wasn’t invisible, I am now.
Accidental Awakening Page 16