Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance (19 page)

The flooring was a white, high-gloss tile. Stainless-steel cabinets and metal lockers lined the walls. There were slots for nameplates along the top of the lockers but the plates had been removed. Brooke opened the lockers; there were red scrubs inside all of them.

“It’s a doctors’ dressing room,” said Brooke. “These are surgical scrubs.”

“Why are they red?” asked Nick, fingering one of the sleeves.

“So blood doesn’t show up,” said Brooke.

“Oh,” said Nick, gingerly replacing the scrub in the locker.

“There’s no dust anywhere,” said Elise, running a finger over a cabinet. “This room’s clean.”

“We’ve found the hospital,” said Will.

He opened another locker and saw round tin film canisters, rows of videotapes, stacks of DVDs.

“What’s all this?” asked Nick.

“Cans of film,” said Will, looking through them. “Dated from the thirties and forties.”

Nick sifted through the rest. “The tapes are from the eighties, the DVDs from the nineties.”

“Put everything back the way we found it,” said Will, replacing the cans.

“There’s air circulating through the room,” said Ajay, holding up his hand to an overhead vent. “A working filtration system.”

“Whatever it’s for, this section is still being used,” said Will.

“Considerably more modern,” said Ajay, studying the doors. “More substantial style of construction. Postwar definitely.”

Will opened a door at the far end and led them into the next room, a spacious laboratory outfitted with computers, servers, and every technological gadget you could think of.

“Electron microscopes … advanced cyclotrons … ,” said Ajay, walking through. “It’s as well equipped as the school’s labs.”

“Suitable for genetic work, gene splicing, that kind of thing?” asked Will.

“More than suitable.”

“When do you think they put this part in?” asked Elise.

“Probably 1980s,” said Ajay. “At the earliest.”

Next to a workbench, Ajay opened a large storage compartment. Inside they found rows of sealed glass containers, most holding a variety of bones suspended in a clear liquid. One held a skull, similar to but smaller than the monstrous one they’d discovered in the cathedral’s crypt.

“I have an idea why they built this place,” said Will.

“Who’s they?”

“The Knights,” said Will, pointing to an insignia on the door, an image of the Paladin. “They found Cahokia and wanted to study it. They punched into the bone room from this side of the cave, not the other way around. That’s what the older section was for, built in the thirties, a command center for the dig.”

“So why’d they build the hospital section?” asked Nick.

“For when they stopped studying,” said Will, shining his flashlight through a door he’d opened into the next room. “And started experimenting.”

Lights switched on as they entered, activated by sensors. This room had a higher ceiling and was perfectly round, with elevated seats surrounding a space with that same shiny, spotless white flooring. An adjustable stainless-steel table, surrounded by medical equipment, stood in its center. Spotlights were suspended over the table. Everything looked immaculately clean.

“An operating theater,” said Elise.

Nick looked more closely at the table and lifted some straps at the corners that ended in complex shackles. “Is it normal to lock people down during surgery?”

“Of course not,” said Brooke.

“Didn’t think so.”

“Who were they operating on?” asked Ajay.

Will didn’t answer. “Let’s keep moving,” he said.

Nick led them through swinging doors at the far end of the surgical theater, feeding into another corridor, this one all white, floors, walls, and ceilings. The electric hum they’d heard since they arrived grew steadily louder here; they were moving closer to whatever its source was.

At the end of the corridor they reached another metallic door, stenciled with a red number 9, in the middle of a solid, poured concrete wall. Will found the corresponding key on the chain and unlocked it. He flicked on some switches to the side of the door and lit everything up.

The square space in front of them was the largest and deepest they’d encountered in the hospital complex. Halfway across was a wall with three equidistant glass doors, which divided the area. There was only darkness behind the door to the left; the pulsating hum they’d heard, much louder now, was issuing from in there. The door appeared heavily secured.

There were lights on inside the door on the right; looking through it they saw a large wall on the room’s right side, which rose out of sight and the ceiling along with it. Set into that wall was a pair of large dark steel doors—ten feet wide, eight feet high—and an operating panel with small lights to the left of them.

“What does that look like to you?” Will asked the others.

“I don’t know,” said Brooke.

“Nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said Elise.

“Like massive steel doors in some super, super top-secret evil scientific laboratory?” asked Nick.

“Hard to top that description,” said Ajay, his eyes opening wide. “But perhaps the entrance to a freezer? There are digital readouts on that panel that could be related to temperature.”

Will turned his attention to the middle section, walking to the solid glass door. Behind it was the smallest room of the three, rectangular, low ceilinged, painted all white. Overhead lights revealed the only two objects in the room—identical bright steel cylinders, shaped like two strangely formed, elliptical beer kegs, in the center of the room.

“Let’s look in here,” said Will.

The thick glass door to the central room wasn’t locked. They pushed inside for a closer look at the two cylinders. They stood five feet high, fashioned from a glossy metallic substance that reflected so much light they were almost painful to look at. No straight edges or corners anywhere on them, every angle rounded and smooth.

“Is it just me, or do these things look aphotic to you?” asked Ajay.

“Totally,” said Nick.

The three guys took out their dark glasses for a look, but aside from a strange white glow emanating from both cylinders, they didn’t notice anything different about them.

“See if you can find a way to open them,” Will asked Ajay, putting his glasses away.

Ajay walked all around and studied each object carefully from every angle. “The metal appears to be seamless,” he said.

Ajay took another small electronic measuring device from his vest. He turned it on and it emitted beams of light that he shined up and down along the object on the left; then he did the same to the one on the right.

“They’re slightly different,” he said. “The one on the left is denser. There seems to be more mass inside it.” He ran his hand over the top of the cylinder. “And there’s something odd here. The very slightest indentation … it almost feels like … the shape of a hand … one a lot bigger than mine.”

Put
your
hand there,
said the voice in Will’s head.

Will stepped forward and placed his hand on top where Ajay had indicated. He felt around until he found the described pattern of fingers and palm. It was a tremendously subtle depression, but his hand was a perfect fit and as soon as he locked in on it, he felt the cool metal under his skin warm up and start to yield, almost as if it were melting slightly to his touch.

“Something’s happening,” he said.

“I think you unlocked it,” said Elise.

A razor-thin seam opened along the front of the metal, running up and down simultaneously until it split the entire cylinder. When the halves started to separate, Will moved his hand away and the others stepped back. The two halves of the cylinder folded back, and a single shelf slid out and fanned open into a half-circle tray. Fashioned from the same metallic material, it appeared to be floating in air. Will looked closer and saw the shelf was attached to the cylinder by a single joint at the back.

There were three indentations on the shelf for three distinctly different objects. All three slots were empty but retained the shapes of the things they were designed to hold: a depression on the left, about a foot across, then a hook-shaped hole next to it that held something like a gun and a spray nozzle, and the last a perfect square about four inches wide and high.

“The Knights must have built this place,” said Will, running his hand over the shapes. “Probably to keep devices they use in here that they either made or brought across.”

“Aphotic devices,” said Ajay. “From the Never-Was.”

“You’ve seen more of these than we have,” said Brooke. “Do any of the shapes look familiar?”

“The middle one,” said Will. “I never held it in my hand, but that thing Lyle used to open the portal to the Never-Was would probably fit here. It was like a gun.”

“You mean the thing we saw Hobbes give to Lyle on Ronnie’s tape?” said Elise.

“Yes. Hobbes called it the Carver,” said Will.

“Where is it now?” asked Nick.

“Damn, I hadn’t even thought about this,” said Will. “Lyle threw it into the cave after the wendigo came through.”

“You think we could still find it there?” asked Ajay.

“We better try,” said Will. “Before they do.”

“What do you suppose these other shapes were holding?” asked Elise, running a hand over the indentations on the shelf.

“Either objects that they found in the ruins or ones they brought across from the Never-Was, I’m not sure,” said Will. “But this tells us there’s at least two more of these gizmos around that I’d like to get a look at.”

“Maybe they’re in here,” said Nick, knocking on the other cylinder.

“Why would they hide something in
that
one that they’re supposed to keep in
this
one?” asked Ajay, annoyed.

“I don’t know, dude. Why does any of what these dudes do even have to make sense? Everybody keeps saying they’re not
human.
”

“Humans built all of this, Nick,” said Will. “Humans that are helping the Other Team. That’s what this whole place is for.”

Will noticed Brooke looking at him intensely. “If the Knights built it, then why did
your
hand open it?”

“I have no idea,” said Will.

“Well, then, see if you can open this one,” said Elise, looking at the cylinder on the right more closely.

Will moved to the other cylinder and ran his hands along the top, looking for another depression. He couldn’t feel anything there, but then he slid his hand along the side. About halfway down he felt the same hand-sized pattern in the metal. Nothing happened when he fit his hand to it, so he ran his left hand down the other side and found another pattern for that hand.

As soon as both hands were in place, Will felt an energetic jolt shoot through the metal. The cylinder started to move, this time splitting in four equal quarters all the way down, sliding slightly away from each other. Will quickly yanked his hands away because once the pieces had completely separated, they turned to face each other and began to rotate clockwise, rapidly picking up speed. Within seconds the sections were spinning around in a tight circle so swiftly that all they could see was a blur.

What they
could
see was a still object around which the panels were spinning: suspended in midair in what would have been the middle of the cylinder was a slender, featureless bright metal tube, about six inches long.

Will quickly threw on his dark glasses—Ajay and Nick did the same—and saw the now-familiar aphotic glow emanate from the silver tube, along with a series of complex studs and buttons that rhythmically emerged from the metal and then liquidly merged back into it.

“If that isn’t Nepsted’s key,” said Ajay, “I’ll eat my spectromagraphic topometer.”

“I beg your jargon?” asked Nick.

“I think you’re right, Ajay,” said Will.

“That’s great, but how do we get it out of there?” said Nick, sharing his glasses with Brooke and Elise so they could see it.

Will took a piece of paper from his bag and extended it slowly toward the spinning sections of the cylinder. The whirling blades instantly shredded the paper.

“Can’t you reach in from the top?” asked Elise.

Will, the tallest in the group, stepped closer and raised his arm above the center to reach down in for it. Sensing movement, the blades adjusted position, two now spinning directly above the silver tube. Brooke pulled his hand back protectively.

“Be careful, those things could take your hand off,” said Brooke.

“We’re not leaving without that key,” said Will, his mind racing. “We need to attack this together.”

A plan took shape in his head and he gave instructions to the others. Brooke was the only one puzzled by his suggestion, but she said she’d give it a try. Four of them stepped back and took positions, waiting for Will’s signal. Nick put his heavy leather gloves back on and moved closest to the cylinder. Ajay knelt down and stared intently at the spinning blades. Brooke stood next to Elise, raised both her hands next to Elise’s back, and waited.

Will nodded at Elise, then walked back to the end of the room.

Elise took a few deep breaths and then summoned up a rumbling, low-frequency stream of sound that took shape like a transparent cloud, distorting the air in front of her. She slowly eased it forward into the path of the spinning blades, creating resistance. They started to slow, but the effort of sustaining it against their brute force almost instantly drained Elise of most of her strength.

“Now, Brooke!” said Will.

Brooke closed her eyes and placed his hands on the center of Elise’s back, supporting her. Elise looked revived and the power of her vocal projection received an instant boost: now the blades slowed enough, almost by half, so you could almost see them.

And Ajay could see them quite distinctly.

“Now, Nick!” said Ajay, staring at them intently.

Nick reached down and grabbed the edge of the nearest blade, planted his feet, put all his leverage into it; all the blades slowed another twenty percent, but their force dragged Nick partway around the floor.

“Now, Will!” shouted Ajay.