The basement area had only five sources of light: a single lightbulb in each of the distant corners and a fifth bulb in the middle. They left the corner of the room and walked slowly between the gray pillars to the light at the center. The concrete floor was dusty, and the air was hot and stagnant.
The lightbulbs flickered, and then died. For a few seconds they stood in complete darkness until Hollis switched on their only flashlight. He looked tense and ready to fight.
They heard a squeaking, raspy sound as if a door was being forced open. Silence. Then the door was shut with a hollow boom. The tips of Maya’s fingers were tingling. She touched Hollis’s arm-don’t move-and they both heard a quick barking noise that sounded like laughter.
Hollis pointed the flashlight between two rows of pillars and they saw something pass through the shadows. “Splicers,” he said. “They sent them down to kill us.”
Maya reached into the knapsack and found the propane blowtorch. Her hands were awkward, fumbling, as she turned the steel knob and lit the nozzle with a cigarette lighter. A blue flame came out of the nozzle with a soft roaring sound. She held it up and took a few steps forward.
Dark shapes passed between the pillars. More quick laughter. The splicers were changing position, running in a circle around them. Maya and Hollis stood with their backs to each other within the small circle of light.
“They don’t die easy,” Hollis told her. “And if you shoot them in the body, the wound heals right away.”
“Go for the head?”
“If you can do it. They’ll keep attacking until they’re destroyed.”
Maya spun around and saw the pack of hyenas about twenty feet away. There were between eight and ten splicers-and they were moving fast. Yellowish fur with black spots. Blunt dark muzzles.
One of the splicers made a high-pitched laughing sound. The pack broke apart, ran between the pillars, and attacked from two sides. Maya placed the blowtorch on the floor in front of her and pumped a round into the combat shotgun. She waited until the pack was ten feet away from her then fired at the lead animal. The pellets hit his chest and he was flung backward, but the others kept coming. Hollis stayed near her, firing his rifle at the other group.
She squeezed the trigger again and again until the firing chamber was empty. Dropping the gun, she drew her sword and pointed it forward like a lance. A splicer leaped through the air and was skewered on the blade. His heavy body fell in front of her. Desperately, she pulled out the sword and began swinging with quick, slashing strokes as two more splicers attacked. They yelped and screamed as the sword cut through their thick skin.
Maya spun around and saw Hollis running away from her, trying to snap a new ammunition clip into his rifle while three splicers chased him. He turned, dropped the flashlight, and swung the rifle at the first attacker, knocking it sideways. Two more splicers jumped on him and he fell backward into the shadows.
Maya picked up the blowtorch with her left hand and gripped her sword with her right. She ran over to Hollis while he tried to fight off the two splicers. She swung downward, cutting off one animal’s head and stabbing the other in the belly. Hollis’s jacket was ripped open. His arm was covered with blood.
“Get up!” she shouted. “You’ve got to get up!”
Hollis scrambled to his feet, found a new ammunition clip, and snapped it into the rifle. A wounded splicer was trying to crawl away, but Maya swung her blade down like an executioner. Her arms were trembling as she stood over the dead body. The splicer’s mouth was open and she could see its teeth.
“Get ready,” Hollis said. “They’re coming again.” He raised his rifle and began murmuring a Jonesie prayer. “I pray to God with all my heart. May His Light protect me from the Evil that-”
A barking laugh came from behind them, and then they were attacked from three sides. Maya fought with her sword, stabbing and slashing at the teeth and claws that came at her, red tongues and wild eyes that burned with hatred. Hollis took single shots at first, trying to conserve his ammunition, then switched to automatic fire. The splicers attacked again and again until the final animal came toward her. Maya raised her sword, ready to swing, but Hollis stepped forward and shot the splicer in the head.
THEY STOOD TOGETHER, surrounded by the dead. Maya felt numb inside, overwhelmed by the fury of the attack.
“You okay?” Hollis’s voice was harsh and strained.
Maya turned to face him. “I think so. What about you?”
“One of them slashed my shoulder, but I can still move my arm. Come on. We need to get moving.”
Maya slipped her sword back into the carrying case. Holding the shotgun with one hand, she led them to the outer edge of the underground area. It took them only a few minutes to find a steel security door, protected by electromagnetic sensors. A cable led from the door to a circuit box and Hollis popped it open. Wires and switches were everywhere, but they were color coded. That made it easier.
“They already know we’re in the building,” Maya explained. “I don’t want them to realize that we’ve reached the staircase.”
“What wire do we cut?”
“Don’t cut anything. That just triggers the alarm.”
Never avoid a difficult decision, her father once told her. Only fools think they can guarantee the right choice. Maya decided that the tamper wires were green and the red wires carried current. She used the blowtorch to melt the plastic covering off each pair of red wires, and then attached them together with small alligator clips.
“Is that going to work?”
“Maybe not.”
“Are they going to be waiting for us?”
“Probably.”
“Well, that sounds promising.” Hollis smiled slightly and that made her feel better. He wasn’t like her father or Mother Blessing, but he was beginning to think like a Harlequin. You had to accept your fate, and still be brave.
Nothing happened when they forced open the steel door. They were at the bottom level of a concrete emergency staircase with lightbulbs on each landing. Maya took the first step, and then started moving quickly.
Find the Traveler.
57
Kennard Nash spoke to one of the technicians monitoring the quantum computer. He gave the man a pat on the back like a coach sending a player back into the game, then crossed the room and sat down next to Michael.
“We’ve received the preliminary message from our friends,” Nash explained. “That usually means that the main transmission will occur in five or ten minutes.”
The general’s bodyguard, Ramón Vega, refilled both wineglasses as Michael nibbled on a cracker. He enjoyed sitting in the shadowy room and watching the sealed glass tank filled with liquid helium. Little explosions kept going off inside the green liquid as the electron switches at the heart of the computer were manipulated within a cage of energy.
The electrons existed within this world, but the quantum property of superposition enabled these subatomic particles to be on and off, up and down, spinning left and spinning right-all at the same time. For an almost imperceptible moment, they were both here and there, crossing over into a parallel dimension. In this other realm, an advanced civilization was waiting with another computer. The computer captured the electrons, arranged them into a packet of information, and sent them back again.
“Are you waiting for anything in particular?” Michael asked.
“A message from them. Perhaps a reward. Three days ago, we transmitted the data obtained when you entered the Second Realm. That’s what they wanted from us-a road map from a Traveler.”
Nash pressed a switch and three plasma-screen TVs were lowered from the ceiling. A technician on the other side of the room was staring at a computer monitor and he began typing commands. Seconds later, points of light and patches of darkness appeared on the left-hand TV screen.