“Good luck with the bureaucrats,” Wesker said with a bit of snip to it.
Jane gave him a look that shut her boss up. She turned back to me, giving a nervous smile. “No dying tomorrow night, okay?”
“I’ll try not to,” I said. “I’ll let Connor steer the boat. That should lessen the odds a bit.”
22
I filed the requisition for the boat the next morning, and once funds were released for the new fiscal month around noon, the Enchancellors approved it and the boat was ours by nightfall. All in all, a day’s delay was a fairly speedy process, by Department standards anyway.
To be on the safe side, we brought the F.O.G. boat into Wards Island at a different angle, one I had hoped would be less filled with aqua-zombies. Whether it was the fact that Jane wasn’t there to draw them to her or not, we got to the island without being assaulted and tied off against the broken remains of the old dock there.
From the outside, the lighthouse looked pretty much as we had left it the other night, but since we were now there looking for the freshly reborn Professor Redfield, I had my bat at the ready as Connor, the Inspectre, and I pushed our way back in through the main doors.
“Just as I suspected,” I said in a whisper. “Still creepy.”
“And it just got creepier,” Connor added, just as quiet. “Look.”
The interior of the lighthouse wasn’t the way we had left it. Most of the film equipment was gone, and what little remained was trashed, broken, or knocked over amid the old, weathered furniture.
“Damned budget,” the Inspectre said. “We’re a day late and a professor short.” He gestured toward the spiral staircase that ran along the opposite wall and the three of us started up through the lighthouse. Every floor was in the same state, but other than the destruction and damage, the place was deserted. We all came back down the stairs, me at the back of the pack with my bat flipped up casually over my shoulder as we reentered the open room on the main floor.
I slowed down as I came off the staircase, looking around the main room again.
“Does something seem a little out of whack with the perspective in here?” I asked.
“It’s hard to tell among all the debris,” Connor said, looking around. “What are you seeing, kid?”
“I’m not sure,” I said, following the curve of the wall. “The wall by the stairs seems a bit. . . off.” I raised my bat and traced it along the wall, tapping. The thick, old plaster chipped away as I went, turning to powder after so many years, but the sound was a solid one. Until I hit the area just below the stairs, that was. There the sound changed, the heft of my retractable steel bat echoing out in a tone different from the rest.
“Well, well,” I said, searching along the wooden beams that ran up and down bordering the section of open wall. I stepped closer to the beam nearest me and saw the slightest hint of a break where the plaster disappeared behind the wood instead of meeting it. I pressed the section of wall and felt it give under my hand, the entire section of wall opening up into a secret room behind it.
“Nice going, kid,” Connor said, patting me on the shoulder. “You want to go in first?”
I shook my head. “After you.”
“How kind,” Connor said, and headed in.
“Not really,” I said. “I just figure if it’s booby-trapped, at least I get a few more seconds of feeling good about finding the door while you trigger it instead of me.”
“Nice,” Connor said, slowing down as he continued into the dark behind the secret door. The Inspectre went in next and I followed, my eyes quickly adjusting to the low light. We were in a dim, windowless chamber that looked like a sinister version of the professor’s NYU office, except most of the shelves here held arcane-looking relics instead of movie miniatures. Huge gaps along them led me to believe that much of the materials there had been removed. The rest of the room had the skeletal remains of film equipment—camera lenses, light rigging, an editorial deck, but it was the arcane stuff scattered throughout that gave me the creeps.
“Well, now,” the Inspectre said, walking around. “This seems more like the Mason Redfield that he always feared becoming.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I said.
“Nonsense, my boy,” he said. “It’s hardly your doing.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I said. “It’s just that I saw who he was back when I read part of your past psychometrically. I saw the promise and potential of who he could have been before he became. . . this.”
“I never would have expected this of him and I knew the man. I haven’t the faintest idea why he would become so corrupt as all this, but I must find out.”
“Check this out,” Connor said from where he stood in the center of the hidden room.
The Inspectre started walking over toward him, and then stopped in his tracks. I followed his gaze to a spot on a table in the center of the room. It was slick with blood.
“Whose is it?” I asked.
The Inspectre walked over to the table, looking it over. He grabbed the edge and lifted up one side of it.
“Sir?” I asked, unsure of what he was doing.
He let go of the table with one of his hands and indicated the surface where all the blood was.
“See how the blood flows when I tilt it?” he asked. “It hasn’t coagulated yet. It’s still fairly fresh. If this had happened before Mason’s death, it would by dried by now or tacky to the touch.”
“I’d say it’s pretty tacky, not cleaning it up,” Connor said. “It ruins the décor.”
I turned and shot him a look.
“What?” he said. “Is cracking wise only your domain or something? I was just trying to ease the tension.”
“Not helping,” I said. “Still feeling tense, but that’s probably just because we know the professor’s alive again.”
“Then maybe we should get to work, gentlemen,” the Inspectre interrupted.
I didn’t need to be told twice. “Fine,” I said, not bothering to banter any further. I turned my attention to taking in as much as I could of the whole hidden room. It wasn’t until I was focusing on the floor that I felt something click.
“Inspectre,” I said, noting the legs of the table, “you didn’t slide the table when you lifted up the one side, did you?”
He thought for a second before answering. “I don’t believe so, no. Why?”
“I didn’t think you had,” I said. “I don’t remember hearing a scraping sound.” I knelt down next to the table, mindful not to kneel in the blood underneath it. “Then why are there drag marks, here. . . and here?” I pointed at two sets of marks next to each pair of legs.
“Someone must have moved it aside before,” I said, and then stood back up. “Help me with this.”
The three of us grabbed the dry spots along the edge of the table and lifted it, moving it away from the center of the room. No longer in the shadow of the table, a definite difference in the flooring was evident.
“A trapdoor,” the Inspectre said.
Connor leaned down and felt around in the drying blood before finding a ring and pulling the door up until it was standing open resting on its hinge. The sound of running water rose up from the darkness below.
“What the hell?” I asked.
“After you, kid,” Connor said, waving me toward the open hole.
“Me?” I croaked out. “Why do I have to go first?”
Connor smiled. “I walked in through the secret door first, so it’s your turn now.”
“Screw that,” I said. “The last time I went down in something like this it was that Oubliette the Department had me test in. I nearly died when it malfunctioned. You’ll excuse me if I’m a bit reluctant to go jumping into another dank, dark hole.”
“Don’t worry,” Connor said. “You’ll be fine. Besides, it builds character.”
“Maybe you should try building a little character, then.”
“I’m full up,” he said, shrugging.