Diego Munoz crouched behind a rock in the brightly lit cavern. His heart hammered against his chest. His sweat-drenched T-shirt hugged his body. He held his laser by his side, prepared to fire at human or creature. It wasn’t easy to accept he might have only seconds left as a living, breathing person, but that’s exactly what he faced.
The faint sound of gunfire crackled somewhere above the cavern, and the shrieks of creatures below provided a continuous sound track to their journey. Directly ahead, the Foundation lackeys in the huge glass dome didn’t seem particularly distracted by the ceiling-mounted lasers spinning on their turrets and firing. They looked more like the subservient people who worked in a drug factory . . . or the MTA’s head office. Low-level employees who never realized how close they were to organized crime or corporate oppression. Those at the top had it good. Those at the bottom took all the risk and did the grunt work.
Munoz peered at the thick glass structure and brightly lit elevator shaft. It was awe-inspiring in a dramatic and nefarious way. The organization’s tech capabilities clearly stretched way beyond just weapons. But, of course, instead of being used for the greater good, they were used to prop up Van Ness’ insanity.
Conspiracy theories were one thing. He had lived much of his adult life focused on the minutiae of events, poring over documents and videos and grainy photos to try to understand the truth of things, to dig into rumor and myth and scratch away at what the establishment told the world, to know what really happened.
Now, though, there was no scratching anymore. This was reality, fully exposed before him. And it was horrifying.
But it also meant that, for the first time, he wasn’t just on the sidelines, commenting on message boards and participating in the research of the esoteric and arcane. Now, Diego was a participant—was an actor on a stage that he always half believed was just that: a farcical play that filled his spare time. There was no more spare time—the Foundation’s control of the creatures, not to mention its arsenal of nuclear weapons, made that the irrefutable truth. And with the chaos unfolding all around them, there was one more truth that hit Diego as he crouched meters away from possible death.
We are the only ones who can alter this course.
Bowcut and Cafferty scrambled from behind another big boulder and dove to his sides. Munoz mentally counted until a laser beam zipped overhead and slammed into the rock face behind them.
“You’ve got three seconds before it shoots,” he whispered loudly.
Bowcut elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m guessing that’s not the first time you’ve said that.”
“Funny,” Diego replied.
“That’s him!” Cafferty blurted out.
“Van Ness?” Bowcut asked.
Cafferty rose to spring forward, but Munoz grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him back. Cafferty gave him a stern look of protest, which Diego firmly responded to with a shake of the head.
“We need a plan, Tom.”
Cafferty was about to argue, but after a deep breath, he nodded. Now wasn’t the time for a reckless charge. With a small sigh of relief, Diego dropped lower and peered around the side of their cover position toward the operations center.
A thin man with gray hair, dressed in an immaculately tailored suit, powered a wheelchair across the operations center floor. He pointed at a couple of members of the Foundation, then glared at a vast console of winking lights.
They needed to get closer, but a head-on assault wasn’t going to work.
“We need to keep leapfrogging from rock to rock,” Munoz said.
“Definitely,” Bowcut agreed.
“Let’s go.”
Diego lurched forward at a crouching run and skidded behind another rock.
Seconds later, one of the lasers fired, blasting the wall behind him. The turret swung back to face the center of the cavern. Bowcut and Cafferty followed his route and once again dove by his sides.
Another scorching set of twin beams zipped overhead.
Munoz figured they had around eight of these mini-dashes to make, the last being the longest, meaning they’d be exposed for longer than three seconds. The other risk was that someone in the operations center would notice the laser was firing at positions that were slowly advancing toward the loading bay.
These were simply risks they had to take.
He rose again and dashed to the next boulder. The operations center loomed closer and closer.
The sound of a creature’s shriek resonated through his body.
Close.
Very close.
Munoz twisted to his right.
Glinting eyes peered at him from inside a cave. A tail whipped out and slammed into the ground inches from his leg. Loose stones blasted against his body. He aimed his laser and fired. The beam punctured through a creature’s face and rocketed into the darkness beyond.
They had to do this faster. They were sitting ducks out in the open and sitting ducks hiding in the shadows.
Bowcut and Cafferty dropped to his sides once more, and the lasers deployed again. Diego waited a moment and sprinted for the next piece of cover. He dropped to the rocky ground and sucked in a deep breath of the thick, stale air.
A few more runs avoiding the advanced weaponry got them to within one sprint of the loading dock. They took a chance to catch their breath before the final, longest dash. The dome was fifty yards to their left. Munoz thought at least one member of the Foundation would see them, but all appeared focused on the consoles and overhead screens.
The worst thing was that Albert Van Ness was tantalizingly close. Munoz could see the man moving about, every so often mouthing what were probably orders to the men and women in the command center. It would be the easiest thing to take a shot at him, but Diego guessed his laser couldn’t pierce the dome’s glass wall—surely that’s a contingency he’d have considered. And bullets would almost certainly be accounted for, because that glass had to be strong enough to resist attacks by the creatures. Either way, to risk shooting at Van Ness would be to give away their position, and that would be the end no matter what.
“This is it,” Cafferty said. “Guys, just in case . . . it’s been an honor.”
“It is an honor,” Bowcut said, her eyes focused on the loading bay. “We’re not dying today, Tom.”
She pushed a rock the size of a large beach ball off the edge of the cavern and thrust forward, charging across the rocky ground with all her might.
A twin set of lasers blasted the falling rock to pieces, then quickly zeroed in on her sprinting for the dock.
Munoz tensed. Bowcut still had twenty yards to cover.
She threw herself toward the smooth concrete floor just as the lasers fired. The beams missed her by inches as she rolled under the cover of the bay. She then edged back toward the metal door on the right side, out of the dome’s view. A worker inside the lair briefly glanced up from his workstation to look at the laser fire, before continuing his work. She was safe.
The laser turret rotated back to face the center of the cavern again.
The shrieks from inside the cavern slowly died out and became eerily quiet.
“Uh-oh,” Diego said.
“We have to go now!” Cafferty shouted. Diego was in complete agreement.
The men bolted out from behind a boulder and ran with all their might.
Munoz focused on planting his boots on the flat areas of the cavern. One trip or stumble would mean the end. He powered forward, aware that a weapon was currently sweeping down toward him.
Cafferty accelerated a few yards ahead. His fitness regimen had served him well. He scrambled inside the loading bay and glanced back at his struggling team member. While Diego was in decent shape, he had certainly taken a few semesters at the school of doughnuts. He winced, expecting a beam to slice through him at any second.
Suddenly, a powerful unseen force dragged at Diego’s feet, as if he were running in thick mud. The look of concern on Cafferty’s and Bowcut’s faces told him the same thing.
“Diego, fight it!” Cafferty screamed.
“I . . . can’t . . . move!” he yelled back, coming to a halt against his will.
“Fight!”
It was no use.
The focused telekinetic powers of the creatures were simply too strong. Diego’s feet slipped on the loose gravel and he hit the ground hard, face-first.
The force pulled his body backward, dragging him toward a tucked-away cave where undoubtedly dozens of creatures waited for their prey.
He clawed at anything to stop himself.
“Diego! No!”
The laser homed in on Munoz’s struggle.
“Help me!” he screamed.
A cacophony of perfectly mimicked “help me’s” bellowed back at him from the abyss below.
The laser prepared to fire.
Bowcut whipped a strobe grenade off her belt, activated it, and threw it full force right at the cave Munoz was being dragged into.
The strobe flew into the dark mouth and light exploded from the device.
Shrieks of pain filled Munoz’s ears, only to diminish as the creatures disappeared deeper into the caves, and the telekinetic grip on him instantly released.
The laser fired.
Now free, Munoz rolled out of the way just as a scorching hot laser blast destroyed the very ground he was just on a fraction of a second earlier. He prepared to scramble again, but the scattering of other creatures gave the lasers a new target, and they blasted away at the monsters as they fled.
Munoz used this distraction, leaping to his feet and sprinting. After what felt like an eternity of exposure, he dove into Bowcut’s waiting arms in the loading dock.
He was safe.
“Who taught you to throw like that?” he asked, catching his breath.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” she replied cheekily.
Cafferty offered a hand and hauled Munoz to his feet. “Very glad you’re alive buddy,” he said. “Now let’s finish this.”
Munoz nodded. Swallowed hard. Knew he’d just avoided death by a split second and Bowcut’s quick thinking. But he had escaped with his life, and that gave him a sense of hope.
For the first time in a while, he felt like maybe they could survive this.
Don’t get cocky, he thought.
The team silently maneuvered past assorted forklifts and mechanical equipment in the direction of one of the complex’s entrances.
This activity was far more in his comfort zone.
Munoz hit an access button on the entrance wall, and a sturdy door slowly opened with an electric grind. The sound echoed around the silent loading dock. He raised his laser, resting his finger lightly on the trigger. Next, he mentally prepared himself for the prospect of killing a person—something he hadn’t done since slicing Agent Samuels into two pieces in the New York subway system, and something he didn’t relish ever having to do again.
A brightly lit whitewashed corridor lay ahead, wide enough to drive a car down. The team entered slowly, carefully.
Munoz peered his head through the door and scanned the ceiling for security cameras. He couldn’t locate any. That didn’t mean they weren’t already being watched, though.
Time would tell.
They slipped through the door one by one into a cool, air-conditioned atmosphere. It was a welcome relief, though only a minor one.
My only real relief will come when we finish our mission.
If we finish it at all . . .
He led the way in the direction of a service elevator not far ahead. This would take them up into the dome itself, assuming he had memorized the schematics correctly. He moved forward with purpose, taking a left turn at the end. They entered a darkened warehouse-style area filled with crates and densely packed industrial shelving units.
The sound of footsteps came at them from the far end of the warehouse. Not fast or aggressive, but nevertheless closing in on their location down the central walkway.
Two armed men appeared out of the shadows in the distance, walking casually.
The team ducked behind a stack of pallets to avoid detection.
“Avoid fighting until it’s absolutely necessary,” Bowcut whispered. “If they don’t know we’re here already, let’s try to keep it that way.”
Cafferty nodded. “Looks like a routine guard rotation. Diego, any other way to get to that elevator?”
Munoz combed through the lair’s layout in his mind. He remembered smaller storage rooms to their left, with a secondary passage that led toward the dome on the other side. He nodded and silently crept in that direction, keeping plenty of distance between the team and the Foundation guards. Bowcut and Cafferty silently followed.
He led them to a door at the side of the warehouse and gently lowered the handle. It opened and Bowcut slipped inside first, weapon raised. A moment later, she ducked back out. “Clear.”
Cafferty followed her in.
Munoz entered last and quietly closed the entrance. The hairs on his arms prickled at the extreme drop in temperature. He turned to see the other two just standing there glued to the spot, staring straight ahead, mouths open.
This was no storage room.
On both sides of the room were ten floor-to-ceiling metal chambers with glass fronts covered in frost. Each let out a quiet hum and had thick cables running from them to steel trays on the ground.
Bowcut advanced to the nearest one. “What the hell?”
Cafferty walked to her side. He scraped a thin layer of ice off the glass window, revealing the face of what looked like a cross between a creature and a human, suspended in liquid animation. The deathly still face had one set of razor-sharp teeth, gray skin, and black eyes.
It looked just like the thing that had attacked them in the De Jong building.
Cafferty stumbled back. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured.