Dead End Read online

  Sounded good, except... “Lyrian and I can communicate without a radio, so best he goes with Valance, and we take either Emory or Deacon. That way, if we do lose radio link, then we can still stay in touch.”

  Emory handed Valance his radio. “You’ll need this.”

  Wilomena nodded. “Sounds good. Let’s find this orgometal and get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

  Getting in wasn’t hard with several dragons in tow. The main door’s hinges melted easily from the heat of Lyrian’s breath, and we were in. The ground floor was a bust. Office space filled with dusty desks, chairs, paperwork that was never finished, and filing cabinets. It looked like an average office, and if it hadn’t been warded, I’d have believed it to be just that.

  “Power’s down,” Emory said. “We’ll need to use the stairs.”

  “Sealed off,” Deacon replied from the stairwell. “Weird.”

  Where the door would have been was a metal slab bolted to the wall. “Can we get it off?”

  “Allow me,” Emory said in a deep voice.

  Gideon?

  Wilomena flinched.

  “It’s okay.” Micha patted her shoulder. “We tolerate him now.”

  Gideon smiled at me with Emory’s mouth, his golden eyes raking over me, and then he stepped up to the metal, grabbed the side, and pulled. The bolts popped and the metal bent back with a screechy protest.

  “Okay, we’re good.” Emory was back.

  He caught my eye, and I couldn’t help but smile. He was doing it, trying to work with Gideon rather than against him. Maybe the alliance could work, and from the look on his face, he was thinking the same thing.

  Emory went through the gap first, followed by Micha. I went next. The stairwell was dark and smelled odd—a musty, potent scent.

  “What the fuck is that?” Micha covered his nose with one hand and shook his head as if trying to shake off the smell.

  “Urine,” Deacon said matter-of-factly. “It smells like urine.”

  Do not gag, do not gag. “Don’t touch anything.”

  I was no germophobe, but this place was bringing out all kinds of OCD. Strange because I’d waded through a sewer and smeared literal crap all over myself to mask my scent, but for some reason this place, this stench, had me thinking of all things disease-related.

  The stairwell lit up, and Wilomena stepped ahead of me to shine a torchlight down the steps. One of the trinkets from her pants of many pockets, no doubt.

  “Valance, you take the floor directly below,” she instructed. “We’ll go down to sublevel two.”

  We descended with the torchlight to guide us, even though most of the group could see perfectly well in the dark. It was obvious the torch was for me, even though she didn’t say it. We hit sublevel one, and Wilomena passed me the torch.

  I took it gratefully and ran it over the scene.

  The door there was hanging off its hinges, and a shiver ran up my spine. “What did that?”

  Wilomena squeezed my shoulder. “Valance, be careful.”

  “Same to you,” he said, his voice a concerned rumble.

  They embraced briefly, and then he vanished through the door with Lyrian and Deacon in tow.

  I guess Emory had made his decision to go with us when he’d handed Valance his radio. The torch beam bounced as we headed down the stairs. The smell got stronger, and I was forced to breathe through my mouth to avoid the stench, which was just as gross, because, fuck, I could taste it.

  Micha made a gagging sound. It must be even worse for him with his heightened senses.

  “Here.” Wilomena slipped ahead to the sublevel two doors, but there was no door there. I think there were labs on this floor.

  We headed into the darkness beyond the doorway. There was a different smell here. Cloying and rusty.

  Blood.

  No one commented on the smell of blood or on the fact that the floors were smeared with dark gunk. There were bloody handprints on the wall too. My fingers tingled with arcana, a defense mechanism that I tamped down on.

  “Something killed people,” Emory said softly.

  “That something should be dead now,” Micha replied.

  Or not. “Let’s just scope out the place, find what we’re looking for, and get the fuck out of here.”

  Wilomena led us down the creepy corridor to a set of closed doors. “Shit. There’s no way through. The power’s out, and these aren’t the kind of doors you can prise open.”

  She was right, there was no seam to grip, nothing to push or pull on. The thing was airtight.

  There was only one course of action. “We need to turn on the power.”

  Usually, any use of electrical power would instantly attract Genesis, but we were surrounded by wards. We’d be okay to try and get a generator working. We just needed to find the generator room. Easy, right?

  I turned to Wilomena. “Do you have any idea where we can find the power generator in this place?”

  “I remember there was a room filled with machinery: computers, generators, I don't know what they were, but it looked like the hub of this place. If I recall correctly, it’s on the floor below.”

  We headed back the way we’d come, and I made sure to keep my eyes ahead, not wanting to dwell on the blood, not wanting to breathe too deeply. It had been over a century, and logic dictated that whatever had run amok through these halls had to be dead by now. Then why was there an ominous tingle going up my spine, and why was my scalp so tight?

  Emory led the way down the stairs while I illuminated his path with my flashlight. How much more power was left in this thing? If it conked out, I’d be at a distinct disadvantage. We hit sublevel three, and this time, the door was intact. It was also locked with a huge padlock and chain.

  Okay, that did not bode well.

  Micha went to snap the lock, but I stopped him.

  “Wait. Can you open it without damaging it?”

  Wilomena reached into her pocket and pulled out a penknife. “I have a lock pick.”

  I watched as she fiddled with the lock and leaned in to whisper in Micha’s ear. “Is there anything she doesn’t have in there?”

  “It’s a mom thing,” he said with a smile.

  Five seconds later, the padlock was free.

  “People don’t put padlocks on doors for no reason.” Emory echoed what we were all thinking.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Wilomena replied.

  I gripped the flashlight tighter. “Just stay vigilant.”

  This time Emory led the way onto the floor. Unlike the previous level, this level was one large open-plan space. Silver metallic boxes with cables running in and out of them lined the floor in neat, orderly rows.

  “Looks like these are data hubs.” Emory kept his voice low. “This place must have held a lot of information.”

  But now the hubs were dead, and many of the cables had been ripped out of their sockets. Emory ran his expert gaze over the hubs and led us down one row. We kept low to the ground and walked on the balls of our feet to minimize the clip of our boots.

  “We’re looking for a generator for the overall power to this place,” he explained.

  We passed a hub that looked like it had been sliced in two. “What the fuck?”

  Emory’s jaw tightened. “Don’t. If we dwell, we’ll just spook ourselves. Let’s just get this done.”

  We rounded the corner, and Emory picked up the pace. “There.”

  A huge squat machine was parked in the center of the aisle. Emory scooped up a cable as he went and tugged it with him toward the machine.

  It was obvious what had happened here—someone had pulled out all the connections to the other machines. We needed to plug it all back in and fire it up. Yeah, sounded super easy, but like hell was it going to be that simple.

  “Let me help.” I handed the torch to Micha. “Can you train this on us?”

  He nodded and held it steady while Emory and I set to work. Two minutes later and the cables wer
e all plugged in.

  “Time to light her up.” Emory’s hand hovered over the power switch.

  A skittering sound echoed up the aisle. I froze, eyes scanning the darkness beyond the halo of light.

  “Kill the torch,” Wilomena ordered.

  The flashlight died, and darkness pressed in on me like an oppressive blanket. Emory’s gloved hand curled over mine and squeezed. Thank God, because if we needed to run, I’d have no fucking clue which way to go.

  I blinked into the darkness, my heart pounding way too hard to be healthy. The skittering sound again, closer this time. Emory tugged me forward slightly, and I let him lead me, but damn, I needed to see. As if on cue, my eyes grew warm, and my vision bloomed green. The world was suddenly in focus, lined in emerald, but it was better than utter darkness. Why the fuck hadn’t the power done that to begin with?

  “There’s something here,” Wilomena whispered. “We need to turn on the generator and make a run for it.”

  We could lock it in once we got out.

  “Good move on not breaking that padlock,” Micha said.

  “On the count of three,” Emory whispered. “One, two.” He hit the power button on the generator, and the machine clanked and whirred as it came to life. “Three.”

  We broke into a run.

  The skittering was to our left, then it was to our right, fuck, it was even behind us. But we were almost at the exit—it glowed green in my vision, door ajar, inviting us to be free. And then with a scrape of metal, a thing of flesh and slime landed before us. My brain struggled to comprehend what it was seeing—a twisted and malformed figure with a maw filled with teeth. Teeth that were snapping at us. My body reacted on autopilot, and a stream of arcana hit it in the face. It screamed and backed off, and we took the opening and ran.

  Micha ushered everyone through. “Hurry, hurry, hurry!”

  We fell into the stairwell, and the door closed behind us. Micha was already tightening the chains and adding the padlock. He snapped it home just as the door rattled with the force of impact. The emergency lights flickered to life, casting the stairwell in an eerie, red glow.

  “Fuck!” I took a step away from the door. “I guess that answers the question of whether this place is still inhabited.”

  “And there could be more,” Emory added. “Let’s find what we need and get the heck out of here.”

  The radio at Wilomena’s hip cracked. “Where are you?” Valance’s voice was shrouded in static. “Sublevel one is clear, and two is locked down. Wait … we have power.”

  “Stay at two,” Wilomena said. “We’re on our way back up.”

  We barreled up the stairs and back onto sublevel two. Valance greeted us at the door, his Draconi eyes cool and assessing. The lights were yellow here and gave everyone a sickly pallor.

  “You put the power up, but the doors need a code,” Valance said. He focused on Emory. “You got this?”

  Wilomena handed Emory her penknife, and he brushed past the Draconi to set to work on the access panel to the door, which was now glowing red. Using the knife, he flipped it open and began to fiddle with the wires. A few minutes later, the light flicked to green, and the door opened with a smooth whoosh as if it had never stopped working. White corridors greeted us, and the faint scent of clinical disinfectant laced the air. The tension in my stomach ebbed a little, taking away the awful conviction that I needed to pee.

  I looked to Emory. “Shut the doors just in case there are more of those things out there.”

  “You don’t think there are any here in the lab section?”

  “No. It’s too clean. Too orderly.”

  “She’s right,” Wilomena said.

  “What things?” Lyrian asked.

  “Trust me,” Micha said. “You do not want to know.” He shuddered and walked over to the first doors on the left. “Oh, look, a lab.” He hit the door release and sauntered in.

  The next few minutes were spent scoping out the first two labs, which seemed to be oriented more toward admin- and data entry than chemical experimentation. Lyrian paired up with me as we opened and closed cupboards and flicked through lab reports that made very little sense.

  “What did you see out there?” Lyrian asked. “I felt your terror.”

  “Honestly, I have no idea.”

  He cupped the back of my neck and then pressed a kiss to my temple. “I fucking hate not having you in my sights.”

  “I know. I can feel that too.” I gave him a one-armed hug, resisting the urge to melt into him. We were so not out of the woods yet.

  “I found something,” Emory called from the corridor.

  Lyrian and I joined the others as they filed out of the labs they’d been searching to find Emory standing at the far end of the corridor.

  He jerked his head to indicate we follow and then vanished around the corner. A set of double doors greeted us, but Emory had already bypassed the code to open them, and the lab beyond was exactly what we’d been looking for. Separated into two parts, one section was filled with apparatus, chemicals, and strange machinery, and the other looked like a playroom. There was a small cot, some toys, and a tiny kid’s table, complete with crayons.

  Valance tapped the glass that separated the lab part from the creepy playroom area. “How much do you want to bet this is one-way mirrored glass?”

  “Why would they need a playroom in a lab?” Deacon muttered.

  “Maybe this can enlighten us?” Emory held up a small silver disc.

  I studied the disc. “What is that?”

  “A DVD recording,” Lyrian said. “They were all the rage once upon a time.”

  “A recording?”

  “If I can get one of these computers up and running …” Emory tapped away at a keyboard.

  Lyrian had found the door to the playroom. He unlocked it and stepped inside, then turned to the glass. “You were right, Dad,” he said. “All I see is my reflection.”

  “So, they what? Put someone in there and observed them?”

  “Not someone,” Deacon said. “A child. The room is tailored for a child.”

  I felt sick.

  “Guys, I have something,” Emory said.

  I turned away from the creepy playroom and joined Emory and Micha at the computer. The screen had lit up with an image … An image of the playroom, but in this movie, the playroom wasn’t empty. A figure sat at the table, small, childlike but not a child. At least not a human one. It was a shadowy figure, solid one moment and murky the next.

  “Oh, God,” Wilomena said. “They were experimenting on a shade child.”

  “Wait, I have audio.” Emory tapped a series of commands, and a voice drifted out of the machine.

  “Simulation is almost complete,” a nasally male voice said. “The shade brain is truly a fascinating structure, more complex than any supernatural beings, and a perfect model for orgometal. Genesis is growing nicely. Phase two will be mimicking electrical impulses from the shade brain to produce the Frankenstein effect, although for the purposes of this experiment, we are not intending to create a monster.” A self-deprecating chuckle followed. God, I wanted to punch the speaker in the gonads. “This will be the Arcana’s greatest achievement, and the world … The world will finally be whole.”

  The shade child stood and walked toward the glass, and damn if it didn’t look like he was staring right at us. But no, how could he? It was one-way.

  The video cut off, and I rubbed my arms to dispel the shivers. “They used a shade child’s brain to create Genesis … They modeled it on this child. Does that mean Genesis was once a child?” My brain ached with the thought.

  “Genesis is a monster,” Wilomena said. “Nothing more. And this child was an unfortunate victim of the Arcana’s efforts.” She looked up at the ceiling. “This place should have been shut down a long time ago. The things they did here …”

  A clanging sound cut through the relative silence, and we all froze.

  Deacon cocked his head. “There is move
ment in the wall.”

  Wilomena’s eyes went wide. “Oh, shit, the vents.”

  I searched the wall until I found one, and then kept my eyes on it. “What about the vents?”

  “Long story, but I used them to navigate this place once, and right now, I think we may be about to meet more of the inhabitants of this place.”

  “Hell, no.” Micha shuddered. “That thing gave me the creeps. I’ll take a scuttler or a soul eater over that fleshy, slimy thing any day.”

  I tore my gaze from the uneventful vent. “We need to find the orgometal. It’s what we came for.”

  But Emory was still focused on the computer because the tape was still playing, and a man was entering the room where the shade boy was fast asleep on the cot. He passed the sleeping child and stopped at the shelves high up on the wall. He reached into his pocket and retrieved a small tub of silvery goo and placed it on the shelf and then left the room.

  The voice was back but spoke in a whisper this time, as if afraid to wake up the sleeping shade child. “We find the orgometal responds better to brain mapping when left in the room with the sleeping child, almost as if it absorbs some essence from the shade. Maybe some kind of brain waves. I’m not sure.”

  Emory looked up sharply and locked gazes with me. The playroom. The clangs were getting louder. Shit.

  I pushed past Wilomena and Valance and swept through the door into the playroom. My finger skimmed across the dusty shelf until they grazed something. Oh, God, please let this be it. I nudged it closer to the edge with my fingers and then grasped it. A tub, just like the picture, and nestled inside was a silvery globule of orgometal.

  “Got it.” I popped the tub in my medpack and joined the others in the lab. “Now, how about we get out of here?”

  Emory pocketed the disc, and we all rushed for the exit. We made it out just as the vent behind us exploded inward. The door closed on the monster scuttering toward us, but in the bright lights of the lab, it was finally clear to see what the creature was … or what it once had been. Doubled over and distorted like melted wax but with four limbs, two eyes, a nose, and a mouth … this creature had once been human or neph.