Ghostwalk

Grant glanced over his shoulder at them. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Kane said hoarsely. “Thanks for all your help.”

Grant shrugged. “I knew you could take him—with Brigid’s help.”

They eyed the metal tower. Although the electronic whine had faded, miniature skeins of lightning played along the rims of the dishes.

“What the hell is that supposed to be?” Kane asked.

Brigid shook her head. “I have no idea.”

“My market for speculation is open.”

“I’d sell it if I had it. At first glance, I’d say it looks like a microwave pulse transmitter. But my gut tells me it’s something else entirely.”

Grant hoisted himself to a knee. “Let’s go take a closer look, since nobody is around.”

“There could be a good reason nobody is around,” Kane commented.

Brigid tried the Commtact frequencies again but heard only static. “There’s no calling for help if he get ourselves trapped.”

Grant snorted. “Since when do we call for help?”

Kane assumed the question was rhetorical. He rose and walked along the ridge until he found the path that the sentries had climbed. The Cerberus warriors descended into the crater, alert for other guards but they saw no one.

They strode across the crater, giving the steel column a wide berth. They heard a deep bass hum emanating from within the tower, a low throbbing that set up shivery vibrations within their eardrums.

The Cerberus warriors walked toward the metal gate and saw it hanging ajar, dim light spilling out from between the flat slats. The square-cut passageway beyond the door stretched away into gloom. Keeping close to the right-hand wall, they followed the curve of the tunnel until it ended at a circular well pit, with metal steps spiraling down.

“Why does it always have to be underground?” Brigid murmured with mock weariness.

Kane responded with a crooked half smile and took the first step, careful that the risers did not creak or squeak beneath his weight. The staircase corkscrewed down only a couple of yards before ending at a low-ceilinged foyer. Stenciled on the wall in red were the letters: Property OF DARPA, IEEE Approved. Must Have A-10 Clearance ID To Proceed.

Brigid’s eyes darted back and forth as she read the words. “Definitely a predark scientific testing facility.”

“What kind?” Grant asked, familiar with but annoyed by the fixation on acronyms.

She pointed to each letter, enunciating the words clearly, “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers gave this place its seal of approval, if that means anything.”

“It doesn’t,” Kane muttered, but he didn’t question her.

Although Brigid Baptiste was a trained historian, having spent over half of her thirty years as an archivist in the Cobaltville Historical Division, there was far more to her storehouse of knowledge than simple training.

Almost everyone who worked in the ville divisions kept secrets, whether they were infractions of the law, unrealized ambitions or deviant sexual predilections. Brigid’s secret was more arcane than the commission of petty crimes or manipulating the baronial system of government for personal aggrandizement.

Her secret was her photographic, or eidetic, memory. She could, after viewing an object or scanning a document, retain exceptionally vivid and detailed visual memories. When she was growing up, she feared she was a psi-mutie, but she later learned that the ability was relatively common among children and usually disappeared by adolescence. It was supposedly very rare among adults, but Brigid was one of the exceptions.

Due to her memory, everything she read or saw or even heard was impressed indelibly in her memory. Since her exile, Brigid had taken full advantage of the redoubt’s vast database, and as an intellectual omnivore she grazed in all fields. Coupled with her memory, her profound knowledge of an extensive and eclectic number of topics made her something of an ambulatory encyclopedia. This trait often irritated Kane, but just as often it had tipped the scales between life and death, so he couldn’t in good conscience become too annoyed with her.

Kane started walking, cradling the appropriated Calico in his arms. “Let’s see what we’ve got here. Let’s explore a little.”

“What do you expect to find?” Grant demanded.

Kane shrugged. “How do I know? That’s why I suggested we explore.”

“Just about every time we explore one of these places, we end up having to run out of it as fast we can,” Grant muttered.

At a cross corridor, they passed a small cafeteria-type dining room, equipped with two upright refrigerators and a large coffeemaker, but no one was seated at the long tables. On the opposite side of the passageway lay an office suite, furnished with a dozen desks, computer stations and file cabinets.

“Where is everybody?” Grant asked. “We saw them come in here, and the place can only be so big.”

“Maybe there’s a back way out,” Brigid suggested.

The corridor turned to the left like an L. They passed a sign on the wall at the angle that read Los Alamos Shuttle. An arrow pointed ahead, in the direction they walked.

Kane glanced around uneasily. “Maybe that’s the back door they took.”

“Could be,” Brigid conceded. “But why?”

The hallway terminated in a door emblazoned with the warning No Unauthorized Admittance.

“That means us.” Grant tried the knob and to his surprise, it turned easily.

Carefully, he pushed the door open and entered a narrow passage illuminated by naked light bulbs in ceiling fixtures. The three people navigated through a labyrinth of pipes, fuse boxes and cooling systems, all the machinery that kept the installation alive and self-sufficient.

Grant, Kane and Brigid became aware of a low hum ahead of them. It was almost like the bass register of a piano, which continued to vibrate long after a key had been struck. Their neck muscles tensed and their diaphragms contracted at the same time they became aware of a dull pain in their temples.

The passageway opened directly into a large circular room, the curving walls lined by consoles. The control surfaces flashed and glowed with various icons and indicator lights. A stainless-steel shaft mounted in a drum-shaped socket rose from the floor and continued through the domed roof.

“Here’s where the tower is raised,” Kane commented. “Whatever the hell it really is.”

Three crystalline hoops surrounded the drum socket at the base of the shaft. The hoops turned slowly and emitted the deep drone. The sound seemed to tighten around their craniums, squeezing and compressing as if their heads were trapped in tightening vises.

Wincing, Kane said, “Let’s get out of here. My head is really hurting.”

“Yeah,” Grant agreed. “Like my skull is being pinched against my brain or something.”

“Just a second,” Brigid replied absently as she inspected the control boards.

She noted the similarity of symbols and letters glowing on various monitor screens. The circle-and-ovoid combination representing the Greek letter theta was repeated over and over. The center screen showed a column of numbers, the digits clocking backward.

Suddenly, realization washed over her like a flood of icy water. She whirled toward her friends. “We definitely should get out of here before the pinching sensation gets any worse.”

She moved swiftly toward the door. Grant and Kane fell into step behind her.

“What’s the problem, Baptiste?” Kane asked.

“I think what we’ve got here is a theta-pinch transmitter,” she said over a shoulder.