Paphos, p.19
Paphos, page 19
Dublin moved much faster than her. She was only halfway by the time he reached the next floor down, still a ways above the crashed elevator, but a good ten meters lower than where they’d started. He was working the doors open, kicking and wrenching them free. At last he looked up with a grin of Irish triumph. “I’ve got us reservations, love.”
“Oh that’s so sweet dear,” she grunted.
“Seem’ I’m always taking care of you, aye?” It was a joke, and it only burned a little.
“You could get me a ladder.”
“Nay, left it in my other pants. You’re not stuck, are ye?”
“Well, yes…” she admitted. She’d been failing to get her feet onto the next ledge, she was struggling with this part. If only her repel line was a bit longer.
“Hurry now, we don’t want to lose our table,” his voice carried up to her. He was only a few steps inside, but not seeing him put an unexpected anxiety in her. A few deep breaths and she’d get there, she just needed to refasten her rappel line. Using her arms she steadied herself and lowered her good leg as far down as it could go while her bad leg dangled. The rappel line slipped free, stinging as the screwdriver flung at her and whipped loose before falling to the floor. So much for the repel line.
“Damn!”
“Alright dear?”
“Aye,” she mimicked in his voice.
“Nay, it’s aye.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Nay it’s not. And don’t scare me again.”
The lighthearted jokes helped to a point, but her hands were sweating, and the reduced grip was adding heavily to her anxiety. She needed to be on solid ground. Without the safety of her rappel line she extended her leg all the way down until her foot was firmly planted on the connecting joint beneath her. Holding on with one hand and the other gripping a bolt she lowered herself, as she did that, a definite sound clanked beneath her.
“Quit dropping things.”
“Wasn’t me that time time… Dublin?”
“Shush now,” he said in a whisper. She held the pipe with ailing strength as Dublin squinted down at shapes too murky to recognize. But the shapes moved, so he looked up at her with a calm face. “Ya’ better hurry, lass,” he said, softly.
The debris stirred, slow and rousing. Of course they weren’t lucky enough for that thing to have died from the fall. Athen reached frantically for the next bolt as a somber tentacle climbed up along the wall. The limb slapped and stuck to the wall, using the leverage. The debris gave way as the creature steadily pulled itself out from under the elevator pinning it. She was staring at it so hard she forgot where her priorities lay. Right on cue, her foot slipped. One tiny slip because she was distracted was all it took. She was falling, briefly, because then Dublin’s big arm snatched her in midair.
He fell back with a wince, tumbling her on top of him. He’d caught her, he’d miraculously grabbed her midair. He stood to his feet and winced as he tested his arm, but he wasn’t waiting for anything. He drew her over his shoulders into a fireman’s carry and forced himself into a run. She dangled over his back and heard the scraping of elevator doors as they cycled closed, muffling the sounds of the stirring rubble.
Dublin made good speed considering the extra carry, and she took a brief note at his impressive strength. This floor was wide with several paths branching in different directions, which meant there was a chance they could lose their pursuer. Her thoughts stopped mid-beat when the doors behind them smashed open. Fear gave his run added speed. She watched the machete bouncing on his leg, wishing she wasn’t what was slowing him down. They didn’t have a prayer of outrunning the creature, and by the last encounter, that machete had limited value.
She looked behind them as the beast emerged through the elevator doors. Their options were dwindlind as Dublin kicked the nearest door open and plopped her down inside. The creature was far away right now, but that would change quickly.
“Dublin!” she cried, warning him.
“I know,” he said, slamming the door shut. He was looking for a hasty barricade.
“It won’t help!”
“Right,” he paused before reaching for his machete.
They had seconds left.
Their room was split into quarters like office cubicles. On the walls were gaping holes similar to laundry chutes or dumbwaiters, they could be promising. Before they could inspect them the door burst open, ripped from its hinges. Dublin turned to face it, wielding his machete, a look of embraced certainty.
“Jump!” Athen ordered, pointing at the holes. Dublin knew what she was thinking.
The creature hurled a huge desk between them. She hobbled and tumbled into one of the holes, and Dublin quickly had to pick a different one. He trust-jumped into one, not expecting to live, but knowing he wouldn’t if the creature got him first.
Only he didn’t fall, instead he went weightlessly up.
CHAPTER 31
Carolina shrieked but only for a moment. She hadn’t been expecting Dublin to appear out of one of those beehive holes, wielding a machete no less, and it gave her a momentary startle.
Dmitry ran up to him. “Dublin? How the hell…”
Dublin was disoriented, not surprisingly, since he had virtually floated up and out of a hole in the wall.
“Athen? Where is she?” he said, holding his head. He shot a glance behind himself. “Am I dead?”
“Not yet. I don’t understand, were you hiding down here?”
“Dmitry, dat’ you? Where is Athen?” he demanded, stumbling to his feet. Dmitry grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Easy does it, you aren’t making sense.”
Dublin shook his head and blinked a couple times. “I jumped in a hole to get away, but I went up, not down,” Dublin said. He looked over his shoulder at the wall again. “Am’ not really sure of the details, it was all very Erin go Bragh.”
“Jumped?”
“Aye, the wall had a hole just like this, but I went up,” Dublin reaffirmed. A look moved across Dublin’s face as he was talking to their team leader, one that Carolina wasn’t sure she actually noticed. He looked angry.
Dmitry poked his head over and felt only an air draft. Carolina had seen him arrive, but Dmitry didn’t, so he was trying to make sense of it all. It was really quite simple, Dublin fell up and out of the wall.
Carolina remained at a distance, visions of her father fresh in her mind. Dublin noticed her tenseness, but said nothing.
“Relax, Carolina, it’s just Dublin, nothing to fear.” Dmitry’s words fell flat, and the wheels in his head started turning again at what he was observing. Dublin had an edge about him, and he couldn’t tell which of them it was for. “We are stronger together, and we’ve all been split up. It’s good to find another friendly face.”
“Aye,” Dublin said, though his voice lacked optimism. Carolina broke eye contact before Dublin tried to make any sort of conversation. If he felt guilty, well, he should. She returned her attention to the walls, wondering why she knew so little about them.
“Tis’ much to go over, when there’s time,” Dublin said. Something about the way he said it got Dmitry’s attention as the Irishman crossed his arms. But if something was on his mind, he dismissed it when he turned to address the beehive-like holes. “Damn anti-grav system here, or something,” he said. “Athen went in one, I went in another. And here I am, so we need to find her.”
“She’s down there?”
“Aye, or somewhere. I jumped into it and it led me here… no elevator, no power, no rope, just swoosh. Felt like falling, but I went up. An’ I’m not leaving Athen again, I’m going to find her.”
“We will,” Dmitry said, observing the holes closely. “So this must be some kind of transport system, hidden in the walls? With everything we’ve seen, why would they do that?”
“Every species has bloody secrets to keep, most likely,” he said. Again, Dmitry’s eyes sharpened at the choice of words. Dublin continued. “Which one did I come out of?” he demanded, struggling to think back. The process had left him disoriented, but he felt compelled to do something. He’d jump in all of them, one at a time, if it brought him to Athen.
“I didn’t see it,” Dmitry replied. “Carolina?”
She shook her head. She wouldn’t help him.
Dublin looked into one, and then into another hole in the wall, looking for anything that might give him clues or direction. It all looked like dirt and shadow to him. He reached his hand out, feeling nothing. No glow or activation, no indication it had ever even happened in the first place. “Lookin’ a big gamble trying it this way. I’d end up anywhere. But damnit, I can’t leave the girl,” Dublin cursed, his fists ready.
“We will find her,” Dmitry said.
Dublin pulled out a glucose packet from his cargo pocket and tore it open. He downed it and tossed the wrapper into the catacomb hole he thought he came out of. It didn’t fall, and at first it didn’t rise. Then, like an ocean current, it was whipped up and out of sight.
“Fascinating,” Dmitry muttered. Dmitry turned to Carolina, wondering if she might have an explanation. “Do you have anything to add?”
Carolina shook her head no, one quick jitter.
“Bloody hell, I’d spend all day getting lost in these trying to find her!”
“If she made it this far, she’ll make it until we find her. She’s tough.”
“Aye, jumped into a tube like this one,” Dublin said, looking around. “S’how far does this place go?”
“We don’t know, we just found it,” Dmitry said. “Was Austin with you?” He watched Dublin this time instead of Carolina. Dublin shook his head no. His face was hard to read. She knew the reason for that.
“Orlean?”
Dublin didn’t answer at first. He inclined his head softly, as if sparing Carolina’s delicate ears, and shook his head no again. Carolina could have spat, which wasn’t a very kid-like thing to think. Why not just spell it out in single letters, thinking that would elude her? Worse, Dmitry almost seemed relieved that the team had shrunk. She held out hope for her dad; she had to.
Dmitry remained quiet long enough to finish his train of thought in silence. No doubt he weighed each of them in his mind, probably discounting Orlean the moment his prosthetic lab went missing. She knew her dad was an electrical engineer or something, so that was likely important. Dmitry didn’t act as if he cared about any of them. She wanted to crack that head open and know more… which was also a strange thing for her to think.
“What do you keep looking at?” Dmitry finally asked, having noticed the Irishman checking over his shoulder repeatedly.
“Jus’ that when we jumped in the holes, it was because the creature was chasing us, I’m half-expected it to show up, too.”
Again, Dmitry folded his arms. Again, Carolina watched as his mind calculated these facts; she pictured him selecting the ways it would help him. The man was such a rat.
“One of these mystery tunnels must go topside…” Dmitry said, as if that’s what he’d been thinking about.
“That’d be lovely, but which one? The holes are as random as buckshot, not a single marking.”
“Maybe we can figure it out,” Dmitry said, reaching for an answer. Dmitry ran his fingers inside one of the tunnel entrances, wondering what could be so discreet and yet capable of transporting matter so easily. Upon closer inspection, his fingers probed the dirt and found a few small, copper-colored, metallic nubs. They must have something to do with how these tunnels worked; he’d love to get a proper scan of them.
“We erased all of the markings to trap them inside…”
Dmitry’s smug little face told her she said something. She’d said that? Yes, that was her. She was the one who said that. She crossed her arms and turned, stunned and awash in confusion. She didn’t remember anything about this room, and it came out of her mouth, but she wasn’t the one talking. What was happening to her? She trembled, her breath shortening, tears at the ready.
The Irishman carefully approached one of the catacomb holes, raising his small flashlight for a better look at the circumference. He could see the remnants of old markings now, too old and scratched out to be of much use. Dmitry followed, squinting at the faint markings that had been scratched away.
“Anything else?” Dmitry asked. “Well, there has to be a map or something.”
Dublin’s head was cocked. “Ya’ hear that?”
They stood still to listen; there were always hollow sounds in this place if you listened. It was picking up the important ones that kept you alive, tuning out the strange industrial clicks and nameless echoes, yet capturing the footsteps and dragging sounds.
Dmitry turned to Carolina with that nasty, smug grin of his. She wished her body were different, bigger, so she could remove that look from his face. “We can’t go back the way we came, not with that thing going around chasing people,” he smiled. “It looks like we’ll have to pick one of these little swoosh tunnels and hope it takes us somewhere better. Dublin, are they safe?”
Dublin seemed reluctant to answer the question. “Safe enough, it scared the hell out of me. No idea how far I went.”
“We will just have to make an educated guess,” Dmitry voted, giving another look in Carolina’s direction. He chose one of the larger holes, wondering if the diameter had anything to do with importance. “This one?” he asked. She gave no reaction. Dmitry drummed his index finger on his pant leg. “Carolina, you will go first.” Dmitry walked over to her. “Is this the one we should take?”
“How would I know?”
“Because you do. No more games. You knew how to get inside, you knew about the traps, and you kept making comments about things you shouldn’t know anything about. And while I don’t know exactly how such insights came to you, I do know I can use them. So, which one is it?”
“Give the lass a break. She’s gone through enough.”
“Oh, she knows.” Dmitry took a step closer to her, towering over her. “I’m not playing any more games. Which one is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Which one?”
“Dmitry, I said back off…”
“Speak up, little girl, or I’ll pick for you.”
Carolina couldn’t stop herself from shaking.
“That one…” she said, pointing at a different hole.
“You’re sure?”
Carolina nodded yes.
“Well, in that case…” Dmitry grabbed Carolina by her arm and pulled her towards the hole.
“Let me go! Get your hands off me!” she cried.
But Dmitry wasn’t listening. He scooped her up and tossed her headfirst into the hole she had picked. Then, he watched in amazement as she zipped up and out of sight, her screams fading away in a mere second.
“Do you think she was telling the truth?” he asked Dublin with a grin.
The Irishman had a deadly glare. “You’re mad, Dmitry, gone and lost it. We’re having a lil’ chat about things, you and me, and soon,” Dublin said, pushing him out of the way. He jumped in after Carolina.
Dmitry stood in the room alone. “You keep your opinions to yourself, Irishman!” he said, though Dublin could not hear him. “I’m still the Commander of this team!” he shouted to no one.
Mad? Hardly. This was history in the making. His discovery here, his actions here, would be famous for all time. “Time to see if the little brat was telling the truth..… Hello?” Dmitry hollered, calling into the opening. “Well then.”
He placed his hands on the outer rim, which felt a little like clay. He slowly pulled himself inside the entry until, and it was just like Dublin said, he fell upwards.
CHAPTER 32
Athen’s chest pounded from the warp in reality. She had jumped into a hole in the wall, and from what happened next, she thought she was seeing things. She had somehow fallen without falling, guided through a complex pathway hidden behind walls and beneath floors, a tunnel system that defied physics. It pulled her like a toy boat down a river; she simply followed the current, traversing a maze behind the seen. Her path was illuminated from vents at times, dark at others. Then she was spit out on the ground, disoriented from the sudden appearance of gravity. She landed on a grated floor, cold and sharp and unwelcome. She didn’t know up from down at first, but her anti-grav training helped her get her bearings. Still, it took a minute to recover.
She had yet to get to her feet, largely from the pain, but not entirely. Every step of the way today, she’d been proud of herself for not crying, and this day easily fell into the category of worst day ever. But then she made a mistake; she looked at her feet. She looked down at her dirty, bare, and blistered feet. That’s when something inside her had had enough. Like the little girl she’d forgotten, Athen cried. She bawled. She let the tears roll because once started, she couldn’t stop. Sure, her leg hurt like hell, the pain was crippling at times and worse at others. And she was tired, hungry, and especially thirsty. But when she looked at the layers of dirt pushed into the lines around her toenails, it was just enough to push her over the edge.
She cried awhile, she let it happen until she was done, and she embraced the doubt that Dublin was behind her, just about to arrive. It all happened so fast, but if he wasn’t here by now, then he was probably somewhere else, assuming he made it out of there. As long as he was safe, that’s all that mattered. The worst was not knowing.
A questioning doubt of the tunnels arose in her thoughts, as if they had been a hallucination. That fed into a greater daydream; that somehow all of this was a hallucination. The fantasy became that she was really back on Earth and in a hospital, as if she’d simply hit her head or something. That would be nice in the sense that she wasn’t really stuck here on Paphos, but she knew better. She couldn’t indulge in hoping it was all a dream. The tunnel flight was real; it was some impossible technology, and beyond that, she put it to rest. She wouldn’t be waking up out of this. It was all very real.
