Chapter 29
WE GET AS CLOSE TO THE CAVE AS WE CAN WITHOUT being seen, and
we duck behind a tree. I place the Xitharis stone on the sticky side of a
section of duct tape. Sam watches with his fingers pinched around his
stopwatch.
“Ready?” I ask.
He nods. I press the Xitharis and the tape to the very
bottom of my sternum. I vanish instantly and Sam hits the
watch’s button, eliciting a soft digital beep. I snatch Sam’s
hand, and together we lurch around the tree and speed to
the cave. It’s all about the task at hand now, and with that in
mind I’m no longer as nervous.
The cave is covered with a large camouflage tarp. We
navigate through the graveyard of dead animals, being
careful not to step on any, which is hard to do without the
luxury of seeing your feet. There are no Mogs outside, and I
hurry forward and flick the tarp aside a little too forcefully.
Sam and I stumble in and four guards jump up from their
seats and raise cylindrical cannons like the one that was
held to my forehead that night in Florida. We stand as still
as statues for a brief moment, and then quietly sneak past,
hoping they’ll attribute the tarp’s sudden disturbance to the
outside wind.
There’s a cool breeze coming from a ventilation system
and the air is oddly fresh, which I hadn’t expected
considering it’s laced with poisonous gas. The gray walls
are polished smooth like flint; electrical conduit connects
dim lights evenly spaced twenty feet apart.
We pass several more scouts and slither by undetected.
The anxiety of the ticking clock racks us both with stress.
We jog, we sprint, we tiptoe, we walk. And when the tunnel
narrows and declines steadily, we sidestep down it. The
cool air grows hot and stifling, and a crimson glow at the
end of the tunnel comes into view. We shuffle towards it
until finally reaching the cave’s beating heart.
The cavernous hall is far larger than I’d imagined based
on Six’s description. A long, continuous ledge runs along
the circular walls and spirals all the way, from top to bottom,
giving the overall appearance of a beehive; and the place
is every bit as busy as one, too—there are literally
hundreds of Mogs in sight, crossing the precarious stone
arched bridges, entering and exiting tunnels. The deep floor
and the vast ceiling are separated by a half mile, and Sam
and I are situated very close to the middle. Two massive
pillars sprout up from the floor and reach all the way to the
ceiling, keeping the whole thing from caving in. The number
of passageways around us is endless.
“My God,” Sam whispers in awe, taking it all in. “It’d take
months to explore this entire thing.”
My eyes are drawn to the lake of glowing green liquid
down below. Even from so far away, the heat off of it makes
it hard to breathe. But despite the near roasting
temperatures, twenty to thirty Mogs work around it,
retrieving carts full of the bubbling stuff and quickly taking it
away. Past the green lake, my eyes focus on something
else.
“I think we can pretty much guess what we’ll find down
that tunnel with the giant bars,” I whisper. It’s three times the
height and width of the passageway that carried us here,
and a checkered pattern of heavy iron bars covers it,
keeping caged whatever beasts are inside. We can hear
them howl from below, deep and almost sorrowful. One
thing is immediately clear: their numbers are far from few.
“It’ll literally take months,” Sam says again in a
disbelieving whisper.
“Well, we have less than an hour,” I whisper back. “So we
better hurry.”
“I think we can put a big X through all those dark narrow
tunnels that look obstructed.”
“I agree. We should start with the one directly across
from us,” I say, looking at what appears to be the central
room’s main artery, wider and better lit than the others, the
one with the greatest number of Mogs coming and going.
The bridge over to it is just a long arch of solid rock that, at
most, is two feet wide. “Think you can make it across that
archway?”
“We’re about to find out,” Sam replies.
“Lead or follow?” I ask.
“Let me lead.”
Sam takes his first few steps uncertainly. Since we have
to keep our hands locked, for the first forty feet or so we
shuffle along sideways. It takes forever, and if we’re to get
to the other side and back again, there’s no way we can do
it at this pace.
“Just don’t look down,” I say to Sam.
“Don’t be cliche,” he responds, squaring his body. We
move ahead slowly, and I wish I could see my feet for just
this obstacle. I’m so focused on not falling that I don’t feel
Sam stop ahead of me, which causes me to stumble into
him, nearly knocking us both off the bridge.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my heart thudding in my
chest. I look up and see why he’s stopped. Racing towards
us is a Mogadorian soldier. He comes charging across in a
jog, and he’s already so close there’s hardly time to react.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Sam says. The soldier
continues forward, cradling a wrapped bundle in his arms,
and when he’s close enough I feel Sam crouch. A second
later, the Mog’s feet are swept out from under him,
completely catching the soldier off guard. He falls over the
side of the bridge and catches himself with one hand as the
bundle he was carrying drops away. The Mog cries out in
pain as my invisible foot crushes his fingers, and he lets go
and drops through the air, splattering far below with a sickly
thud.
Sam races us forward before any further calamities
arise. Every single Mog in the area has stopped in
midstride, staring at one another with confused
expressions. I wonder if they believe what just happened
was an accident, or if they’re now on alert.
Sam squeezes my hand in relief when we’ve made it
across, and he lurches ahead, having gained a world of
confidence from killing the soldier.
The next corridor is wide and busy, and it doesn’t take
long for Sam and me to realize we’re heading in the wrong
direction; the rooms we pass are exclusively private, and
the entire wing seems to be where the Mogs live: caves
with beds, a large open cafeteria with hundreds of tables, a
shooting range. We rush down a nearby corridor, but the
result is the same. And then we try a third.
We follow the winding tunnel deeper into the mountain.
Several tributaries lead away from the main drag, and Sam
and I randomly turn down them based on nothing more than
gut feeling. Aside from the main hall we entered, the rest of
the mountain is nothing more than an interconnected
network of damp stone corridors, off of which various
rooms house research centers with examination tables,
computers and shiny, sharp instruments. We pass several
scientific laboratories that we both wish we had the time to
investigate further as we rush by. We’ve probably run a
mile, maybe two, and with each new corridor that turns up
nothing, stress floods my veins.
“We can’t have more than fifteen minutes left, John.”
“I’m aware of that,” I whisper, desperate and irritated and
quickly losing hope.
When we take the next turn and rush up a steady incline,
we pass the thing I’d feared most: a room full of prison
cells. Sam stops in midstride and keeps a firm grip on my
hand, causing me to stop as well. Twenty to thirty
Mogadorians guard more than forty cells, all lined up in a
row, with heavy steel doors. In front of each door, there’s a
bubbling blue force field pulsing with electricity.
“Look at all those cells,” Sam says. I know he’s thinking
of his dad.
“Wait a second,” I say, the solution flashing into my head
from out of nowhere. It’s so obvious.
“What?” Sam asks.
“I know where the Chest is,” I say.
“Seriously?”
“So stupid of me,” I whisper. “Sam, if you could pick just
one place in this entire hellhole where you’d absolutely
refuse to go, where would that place be?”
“In the pit with the howling beasts,” he answers without a
second’s hesitation.
“Exactly,” I say. “Come on, let’s go.”
I lead him back up the corridor that’ll empty out at the
cave’s center; but before we’ve left the cells behind, a door
clangs open and Sam jerks his hand to stop me.
“Look,” he says.
The nearest cell door stands wide-open. Two guards
enter. They speak angrily for ten seconds in their native
tongue, and when they exit they’re clutching the arms of a
pale, emaciated man in his late twenties. He’s weak to the
point of having trouble walking, and Sam’s grip tightens as
the guards shove him forward. One of them unlocks a
second door, and all three disappear through it.
“Who do you think they have locked up in there?” he asks
as I pull him forward.
“We gotta go, Sam,” I say. “We don’t have the time.”
“They’re torturing humans, John,” he says when we finally
reach the central hive. “Human beings.”
“I know,” I say, scanning the mammoth room for the
quickest route down. There are Mogs everywhere, but I’ve
become so used to passing by them that they no longer
bother me. And besides, something tells me I’m about to
find far scarier things than scouts and soldiers.
“People with families who probably have no idea where
they’ve disappeared to,” Sam whispers.
“I know, I know,” I say. “Come on, we’ll talk about it when
we’re out of here. Maybe Six will have some sort of plan.”
We sprint around the spiral ledge and start down a tall
ladder, but find it’s nearly impossible to do so while holding
the person’s hand above you. I look down. There’s still a far
way to go.
“We have to jump,” I say to Sam. “Otherwise it’ll take ten
minutes to get all the way down there.”
“Jump?” he asks incredulously. “It’ll kill us.”
“Don’t worry,” I assure him. “I’ll catch you.”
“How the hell are you going to catch me if I’m holding
your hand the whole time?”
But there isn’t time to argue or debate. I take a deep
breath, and leap from the ledge a hundred feet above the
cave’s bottom. Sam howls, but the continuous clatter of
manufacturing drowns out the noise. My feet hit the
unyielding stone, and the force knocks me backwards; but I
keep a firm grip on Sam, who lands on top of me.
“Never again are we doing that,” he says, standing.
The ground floor is so hot it’s nearly impossible to
breathe, but we sprint around the green lake towards the
massive gate keeping the beasts locked away. When we
reach it, a cool wind gusts through the bars, and I realize
that the regular blasts of fresh air prevent any of the gas
from entering this tunnel.
“John, I really don’t think there’s any time left,” Sam
pleads.
“I know,” I say, letting a group of ten or so Mogs exit
ahead of us.
We enter a dark tunnel. The walls look mucus covered,
and barred chambers line each side of the shaft. Down the
middle of the ceiling ten huge industrial fans blow, all
pointed towards the entry we just came through, keeping
the air cool and moist. Some of the locked chambers are
small, though others are large, and bursting out of them all
are feral and ferocious sounds. In the cage on our left are
twenty to thirty krauls jumping over one another while letting
loose shrill yips. Imprisoned on our right is a pack of
demonic-looking dogs the size of wolves, with yellow eyes
and no hair. Beside them stands a creature that looks like a
troll, complete with a wart-covered nose. In a larger cell
across the way a massive piken not unlike the one who
busted through the prison wall that morning paces back and
forth, sniffing the air.
“We might as well not even bother with these smaller
rooms,” I say. “If my Chest is here, it’ll be in the biggest
room at the end of this tunnel. I don’t even want to take a
guess at what kind of beast needs a door that large to fit
through.”
“We’re down to seconds, John.”
“We better hurry then,” I say, pulling Sam forward while
quickly taking in the different horrors corralled here:
gargoylelike winged creatures, monsters with six arms and
red skin, several more pikens standing twenty feet tall, a
wide reptilian mutant with trident-shaped horns, a monster
with skin so transparent that its internal organs are on
display.
“Whoa,” I say, stopping at a group of rounded tanks and
vessels, most of which are silver, though two are copper
colored and lined with heat gauges. Some kind of boiler
room, I guess.
“So that’s what’s keeping this place going,” Sam says.
“This has to be it,” I reply. The tallest silo goes to the
ceiling, and every tank is connected with heavy pipes,
spouts, and aluminum ducts. Beside the silo, a control
panel is affixed to the wall with a heap of electrical wires
pouring out.
“Come on,” Sam says, impatiently jerking my hand.
Together we run the rest of the way to the tunnel’s end.
There’s a massive door, forty to fifty feet tall and wide,
made entirely of steel. To its right is a small wooden door.
It’s unlocked, and instantly I see why.
“Holy God,” Sam whispers, taking in the beast’s
enormity.
I’m momentarily stunned myself, and all I can do is stare
at it: a hulking mass slumped in the room’s far corner. Its
eyes are closed and it breathes rhythmically. The beast
must be fifty feet tall when standing, and from what I can tell
its dark body is shaped like a man’s, but with much longer
arms.
“I want nothing to do with this place,” Sam says.
“You sure?” I ask, nudging him so his gaze leaves the
monster. “Look.”
There, in the center of the room, at eye level atop a thick
stone pedestal, is my Chest. And right beside it sits a
second one, almost identical in appearance. Both of them
there for the taking. Except for the iron bars around them,
which are housed beneath a humming and crackling
electrical force field surrounded by a moat of the steaming
green liquid. And the slumbering giant.
“That’s not Six’s Chest,” I say.
“What are you talking about? Who else’s would it be?”
Sam asks, confused.
“They found us, Sam. In Florida, they found us by opening
Six’s Chest.”
“Right, I know.”
“But look at the padlock on it. Why would they put the lock
back on a Chest that they probably had a hell of a time
getting into in the first place? I think that one’s never been
opened.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“It could be any of ours,” I whisper, shaking my head while
staring up at them both. “Number Five’s or Nine’s or
anyone’s who isn’t dead yet.”
“So they stole the Chest and didn’t kill the Garde?”
“Like they did with me. Or maybe the Mogs caught one of
them and they’re being held here like Six was,” I say.
Sam doesn’t get a chance to answer, because just then
the alarm on his wristwatch begins to beep. Three seconds
later it’s followed by the whine of a hundred sirens echoing
off the walls of the cave.
“Aw hell,” I say, turning my head. “I can see you, Sam.”
He nods, a panicked look on his face. He lets go of my
hand. “I can see you, too.”
When I look over Sam’s shoulder, the beast’s eyes have
come open—blank and white—narrowing in our direction.
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