Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance (20 page)

Will took two steps and dove up and over the cylinder. Once over it he reached down in between the slowed blades. Before they could react, he snatched the silver tube, then tucked and rolled onto the ground on the other side.

“Get away from it!” he yelled.

Nick let go of the blade, Elise dissolved her sound cloud, and all of them were knocked back by an energetic concussion as the blades resumed whirring. Will looked at the tube in his hand, intact, glowing with a slight pulsation of light. It felt almost weightless, as if it might float away if he didn’t hold on to it.

The sections of the cylinder stopped moving and reassembled into one solid piece with a loud clank. The metal changed color, turning from bright silver to a dark shade of crimson.

“That can’t be good,” said Nick, shaking his hands in pain as he took off his gloves. “It’s never good when stuff turns red.”

“I don’t know,” said Will.

“Your fingers are bleeding,” said Elise.

“Lucky for me we’re in a hospital,” said Nick casually as Elise examined the cuts.

Brooke moved to Will, took him aside, and spoke in an urgent whisper. “What did I do just then? How did you know I could do anything like that?”

“Something I noticed earlier,” he said. “We don’t have time to talk about it right now.”

She looked frightened. “But it means—”

“I know what it means,” he whispered, trying to smile. “Don’t worry, you’re okay. The good news is you don’t have to feel left out anymore.”

“Will, look behind you,” said Ajay, pointing.

Will turned. The wall on the left side of the chamber had a window in it. Overhead lights had dimmed in the next room, allowing them to see inside. By far the largest of the three chambers, it was also the strangest.

Two orderly rows of large metallic canisters, a dozen of them about ten feet high, took up most of the room that they could see. Stacks of advanced electronics and technological devices and monitors surrounded them.

“Will, we got what we came for,” said Elise, grabbing him by the shirt, whispering fiercely. “Let’s get out of here.”

“We need to look in there first,” said Will.

The others followed Will as he hustled out of the cylinder room and moved to the door of the chamber on the left. They couldn’t see much through its front glass wall, even with lights on inside, because this glass turned out to be clouded and opaque.

“Can you see anything?” Will asked Ajay.

Ajay pressed his face up against the glass and opened his eyes wide. “Nothing moving. All I can make out are large, stationary pieces of equipment.”

Brooke asked Will to wait, long enough to dress some bandages from her pack onto Nick’s hands. He looked like he’d tried to grab a bacon slicer, but once she’d cleaned them, the cuts turned out to be superficial. When she finished, he slipped his leather gloves back on.

“Good to go,” said Nick.

Will put his dark glasses on and examined the external lock hanging on the room’s door. It had a complex, unearthly appearance similar to the one on Nepsted’s cage, fingers of steel slithering around a central gemlike shaft as if the whole thing were alive, glowing with a ghostly green nimbus. Will looked over and saw that Ajay had put his glasses on as well.

“I think it might work,” said Ajay.

“Let’s give it a try,” said Will.

Will lifted the silver key and held it next to the lock, and the device came alive in his hand. Fingers of liquid metal extruded from the body of the tube, reached out, and interacted with mobile parts of the lock in a complex dance, twisting and merging while changing colors rapidly, all in a way that seemed organic, a process that Will could somehow sense was the key persuading the lock to yield.

The interaction ended with a satisfying
clunk
as the bolt opened. All the moving parts of both devices instantly withdraw back into their original forms, and the sickly green light drained out of the lock. As soon as it was completely inert, the door gave way and swung open as if an unseen hand had pushed it.

Will eased it open the rest of the way and stepped inside. Ajay and Elise followed him, but Brooke stopped on the threshold.

“What’s wrong?” whispered Will.

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I can’t go in there.”

“Stay with her, Nick,” said Will.

Nick signaled that he would. Will, Ajay, and Elise moved inside. Huge stacks of equipment, most rising to the ceiling in a strangely haphazard way, generated a disabling drone that overwhelmed all sound and made it hard to even think.

Will looked at Elise and asked silently,
Can you do anything about the noise?

I can try.

Elise concentrated for a moment, opened her mouth, and emitted a high note beyond Will’s hearing, but when he activated his Grid, he could see it energetically deploy throughout the room like an opening parachute, neutralizing the din, dampening its disabling effects by half.

“Remind me to invite you to the prom,” said Ajay as he moved past her, taking readings with one of his devices.

The canisters stood on raised concrete platforms, three feet high, spaced far enough apart to create an aisle between the two rows. The three friends moved slowly down the aisle. Each canister had an aphotic lock near its base similar to the one on the door. They weren’t solid metal, as Will had first thought; each had a riveted panel of curved glass in front, about five feet off the ground. They were pitch-black inside, but they could see just enough to realize that all of the tanks were filled, at least to the level of their window, with some kind of dark liquid.

“There are numbered plates on the base below each container,” said Ajay, pointing out small pieces of brass attached to the concrete. “One through twelve. Followed by letters … two apiece … all these same initials were on the page from 1937 in that ledger up front …”

“These last two tanks are empty,” said Will, reaching the end of the row. “But the plate on number twelve has initials like the others—E. S.”

“Number eleven, too,” said Elise, reading the plate on the next to last canister. “R and L.”

A chill run up Will’s spine. “Ajay, pull up that picture I took of the plane crash memorial.”

“Give me a moment,” said Ajay, taking out the camera pen.

He transferred the digital image to a handheld device that projected it into the air nearby. Will turned to Elise, eyes wired by what was in his mind, and sent a quick picture of what he was thinking—knowing she was strong enough to handle it—and she was.

I need your help,
he said.

I’m right here with you,
she answered.

“Read the names, Ajay,” said Will, standing by the first canister. “In order.”

“Gerald Alverson … Thomas Bigby … Thornton Cross … Jonathon Edwards … Professor Joseph Enderman … Carl Forrester … George Gage … Richard Hornsby … Robert Jacks … Theodore Lewis … Raymond Llewelyn … Edgar Snow.”

Will and Elise traveled down the rows, checking initials against the names.

“The Knights of Charlemagne, class of 1937,” said Elise quietly. “Ten of them anyway.”

“Twelve students and one teacher went down on that plane,” said Will, looking at the photo of the memorial. “Abelson, the teacher, isn’t here. Neither are two of the students.”

“Edgar Snow and Raymond Llewelyn,” said Elise. “Aka Hobbes and Nepsted.”

They heard a distinct splash in one of the tanks, somewhere in the middle of the row, next to where Ajay was standing. All three of them froze.

“What was that?” asked Ajay, his voice very small.

Will and Elise locked eyes and knew they were thinking the same thing. They swung their flashlights up and trained them on a tank in the center of the left row, taking a couple of steps toward it.

Another splash from inside the tank. Turning toward Will and Elise, Ajay’s eyes looked big enough to jump out of his head.

Will sent a word to Elise:
NOW!

They switched on their flashlights and pointed at the glass panel on the front of the tank. The liquid inside, dank, yellow-green, and thick with sediment, was sloshing around.

Ajay still hadn’t turned to look at it, but he did now, slowly, when he saw the flashlights come on.

Something slapped up against the glass right above Ajay. A large, misshapen melted mass that reminded Will of a cluster of kelp washed up on a beach, pale and sickly, and somewhere in the middle of it they could make out a pair of distended, almost human eyes. A keening wail issued from the tank that froze their hearts.

And then, all around them, fluid stirred in the rest of the tanks. Other terrible things inside began throwing themselves at the glass. Will averted his eyes but still picked up impressions: paddles, fins, eyes, sacks of mottled flesh. Other sounds, equally piteous and strange, cried out to them, a chorus of ungodly voices.

They ran on blind instinct, picking up Ajay along the way, carrying him out the door, his eyes shut tight, trying to catch his breath, paralyzed with horror. Will slammed the door behind them, which didn’t do enough to kill the haunting voices trailing after them. The aphotic lock reengaged as the door closed.

Brooke and Nick weren’t in the vestibule where they’d left them.

“Nick!” Will shouted.

“Over here!” Nick answered.

They ran to the room on the far right, dragging Ajay with them. Nick and Brooke stood in the open doorway, looking at the panel beside the big steel doors. Lights flashed intensely; the whole room was humming from some kind of machinery behind the doors.

“Dude, it’s not a
freezer
—”

“What?” Will could hardly think straight.

“It’s an
elevator,
” said Brooke.

Will looked up; the whole wall was starting to vibrate, the sounds getting louder.

“And it’s coming
down,
” said Nick.

Will took Brooke aside, grabbed her hands, and put them on Ajay’s shoulders. He was moaning slightly and still hadn’t opened his eyes.

“Help him,” said Will urgently. “We won’t get out of here in time if he can’t move.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“He’s in shock. I can’t explain now, and I’ll try to help, just
do it.
”

Brooke nodded, closed her eyes, held on to Ajay, and concentrated. Will went to work at the same time, pushing a thought picture at Ajay:
The room with the tanks. Nothing in them. Empty.

Ajay slumped forward. Will and Elise caught him. Ajay opened his eyes a moment later. He looked himself again, but confused and still wobbly on his feet.

“What happened?” he asked.

“You blacked out for a second,” said Will.

“How odd,” said Ajay calmly. “I don’t remember—”

“Time to go, pal,” said Will.

Will glanced back again. The steel doors and the entire wall around it were rattling now, as whatever was descending down the shaft dropped closer to them.

“By all means, we’d best vamoose, then,” said Ajay.

Elise and Brooke took him by the arms to steady him and they ran toward the exit. As he followed, Will saw that Nick had wandered over near the door to the tank room.

“Nick!” shouted Will.

“But I heard something in here—”

“Not NOW!” shouted Will and Elise in unison.

Nick hurried after them, the last one out the steel door they’d entered through.

“Close every door behind us,” said Will.

Nick slammed it shut. Will thrust in the right key from the ring and turned it. They followed the others back through the operating theater and then out the entrance to the hospital section, Will stopping to lock each door he’d opened behind them.

As he pulled the key from the steel door labeled 19, a tremendous thud shook the entire building: The elevator had landed.

“They’re here,” said Will. “Hurry!”

They hurtled back through the paneled corridors, even Ajay keeping pace, running without prompting now. They were in such a panic Brooke and Ajay ran past the door they’d used to enter the building; Will whistled at them, and they spun back and followed the others outside.

“Head back up to the ledge where we came in,” said Will, pointing. “Get behind those rocks. Keep quiet, stay off the comm system, and no flashlights.”

Nick led the way and Will brought up the rear, glancing back at the building, looking for signs of pursuit. He saw bright flashes of light coming from the back of the hospital and wondered if they’d used another way to get outside. When they were halfway back up the rocky path to the ledge, the whole cave around the building filled with an overhead canopy of light. Will looked up and realized they’d fired a flare.

They scrambled behind the rocks on the ledge and took shelter, just as the light billowed and spread throughout the chamber, bright enough to cast moving shadows.

“Stay low,” whispered Will. “When I give the word, head back to the stone platform.”

“And hope it goes up,” said Nick.

“Remember it won’t move unless all five of us are on it.”

“Who is it, Will?” asked Elise. “Who’s down there?”

“I’ll hang back a second and find out,” said Will. “Go now, Ajay with Elise, then Nick with Brooke. Stay off the walkies unless you hear from me.”

Will watched the building as Ajay and Elise scampered up the path and through the carved passage leading to the bone room.

“Don’t be late,” said Nick, patting Will on the shoulder.

Brooke squeezed Will’s hand and hurried off with Nick. Will picked out his binoculars, scanned both sides of the building, then trained them on the lit-up reception room.

Four men burst into the room, guns drawn. Dark Windbreakers and hats: the Black Caps. Will felt something vibrate in his pocket. He took out the pair of black dice; they were vibrating wildly with some kind of internal energy. A moment later a fifth man appeared in the reception area. He wasn’t wearing a cap and his bald head gleamed in the amber light.

It was Hobbes. And he looked
furious.

At his direction, the others searched the room quickly and efficiently. Hobbes moved to the window, staring out at the cave, and spoke into a microphone fastened to his collar.

For the briefest moment Hobbes glanced up toward the ledge. Will ducked out of sight and lowered the glasses. With his head down, he summoned up his Grid, waited for the light from the flare overhead to fade, then glanced over the rocks again.

He picked up about fifteen heat signatures spreading out from either side of the building, slowly and methodically scouring the grounds. Will looked back at Hobbes in the window.

The moment he raised his head, the aura of heat around Hobbes, five times stronger than any of the others, flared up around him in a corona of fiery red and orange. He raised his right arm, holding something in his hand and pointing it in Will’s direction.

Which led Will to ask himself,
Can Hobbes see me like I can see him?

The answer came quickly: Hobbes burst right through the window, shattering the glass, and started running toward the ledge, barking instructions. Will shut down his Grid, turned, and ran up the path to the passage.

Dashing through the hole in the wall, Will switched on his flashlight, then powered up to the hill of bones and sped along the path. He spotted flashlights darting around ahead, and within moments caught up to Nick and Brooke, moving so fast he sped ten feet past them before he could put on the brakes.

“They’re coming,” he said, circling back.

They both ran faster and he did what he could to help them through the uncertain footing. Glancing back, Will didn’t see any lights behind them yet. They reached Ajay and Elise moments later, just as they climbed onto the stone platform.

“Get on, fast,” said Will. “Lights off.”

Nick lifted Brooke up onto the platform. Will ran the last few paces and jumped up after her. Nick leaped up after him with a single springing bounce, and as his weight hit the platform, they felt it jolt, heard the rattle of chains, and the platform began to ascend.

“Stay low,” said Will. “Don’t say a word. Hobbes is back there, with a squad of Caps.”

Everyone but Nick exchanged worried glances.

“Hey, we’re good,” said Nick, unconcerned. “How are they going to follow us up here?”