Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

I glanced down at the line of light beneath the door. The shadows had stopped moving there. The people, I guess, had taken their places. The show was about to begin.

I grabbed a piece of paper off one of the pads. Tore off a square. The light in the high ceiling above me dimmed and dimmed and went out. Darkness settled over me. Feeling my way, I worked the blank square of paper into the plastic envelope. I pulled the lanyard over my neck. In the dark, maybe it would pass for an ID card.

I could see nothing now but the light at the bottom of the door. It had changed from a bright line to a smoky red glow. That would be the glow of the sign above the emergency exit, I figured. Aside from that, it must be dark now in the corridor, too. If I had any chance of getting out of here unseen, this was it. Empty as I was, weary as I was, weak as I was, it was time to move.

I took a breath. I went to the closet door. For a second, I thought about cracking it open, peeking out to see if the way was clear. But I decided that now, in the dark, it was best to act boldly, as if I belonged here. So, with tension like a fist in my throat, I pulled the door open quickly and stepped out into the hall.

I entered the dim red glow of the exit sign. At the edge of the glow, I could see other figures: those workers and guards. I could sense more people farther off along the hall as well. I could feel them there, standing still and quiet as the show began in the auditorium.

Music started. Brass and strings, slow, solemn, and yet somehow triumphant: the grand opening theme of the first Real 3-D movie ever, The End of Civilization as We Know It. The music was muffled by the corridor walls, but still loud. It still surrounded me. As I started striding along the corridor, my footsteps fell naturally into sync with the majestic beat of the sound track.

Soon I could make out the plainclothes security man posted at the far corner. He stood with his hands behind his back, scanning the shadows. As I came near him, the gleam of his eyes, the outline of his features, the coiled wire running up his jaw to his ear, all became visible in the red light. I offered him a quick businesslike smile. A wave of the hand to distract him from the blank ID card around my neck. He smiled back indulgently. I went past him, and continued around the corner.

There was more red light in the next hall, a sign about halfway down pointing back to the exit behind me, and a bare red bulb at the far end. The bulb illuminated a heavy metal door with a push-bar across it. Yet another guard was posted here, standing to one side of the door, a great black shape limned by the misty red light. Judging by his position, he was distracted at the moment. He was leaning off to one side, trying to catch a glimpse of the show. The music lifted and swelled as I went toward him.

As I came near, the guard noticed me. He straightened, looked me over. I smiled again, pointed at the metal door, and held up the bogus ID tag around my neck as if to let him read it. I covered it with my thumb, but it didn't really matter. He barely glanced at it. He went back to trying to see the movie.

I approached the door. I could make out a word stenciled onto it: STAIRS. That's what I wanted. Rashid had told me the blast would be most powerful in the cellar. He told me he thought Jamal would leave Serena there. Because he loved her and wanted to impress her, because he wanted her to witness his great achievement and to be a part of it.

I pushed the door open carefully to keep the noise to a minimum. At that moment, there was a loud gasp of delight from the theater. I hesitated-but it was just the audience-some three thousand people getting their first look at Real 3-D technology. There was an outbreak of applause.

I went into the stairwell. The applause faded behind me.

At first, there was dim white light in here. A small square fluorescent lamp was fastened to the wall just above my head. It spread a pale glow over the falling and rising flights of gray steps. I was glad it was there. It helped me find my way to the downward flight, helped me get a grip on the banister. But as I descended into the theater's cellar, the light grew fainter. The music grew fainter, too. I heard another burst of applause and a burst of laughter, but they sounded very far away.

Then, when I reached the cellar door and pushed through, I stepped into what seemed at first impenetrable blackness. I knew at once that this was strange; wrong. There should have been some light, some small light somewhere. But when the door slipped from my hand and clacked shut on the stairs behind me, I could see nothing, absolutely nothing out in front. There was silence, too. The air felt deep and thick with it, like a cushion pressing in on me.

I stood where I was, staring uselessly, afraid to move away from the exit, afraid to remain there and do nothing. That dark, that silence-they were so dense, so present, so palpable that, for the first time, I began to believe I was going to die here. For the first time, that possibility became real to me. With the dark so deep, so vast, with the silence so eerie and oppressive, I could not see how I would be able to do what I needed to do here; how I would ever find Serena, how I would locate the detonators and disable them. Even with Rashid's frantically precise directions, his complete knowledge about how and where the explosives were planted, it seemed an impossible task. I had a sure sense that time was running out, that it may have run out already. The show had already started. There was no more reason for them to wait. There was just me and the dark and the silence and the coming explosion.

So I began to believe I was going to die. At that point, the thought came almost as a relief. I was so sick of myself, so sick of the things I'd done that night. Sick at what I'd done to Rashid. Sick that I had crouched in that closet as if I were some kind of predatory monster, ready and willing to strangle that poor girl, Maryanne. How was I supposed to go home after that? Make love to my wife, play with my children? How was I supposed to go to church again and shake the hands of my neighbors there and wish them God's peace?

To be honest, if it had just been me, I think I would've sat down right then, right there, invisible in the darkness. I think I would've just laid my forehead on my knees and waited to be blown away.

But of course it wasn't just me. It never was. Serena was out in that blackness somewhere. And the people upstairs-all those thousands of faces, flickering in the movie-light-and the faces waiting on the street outside-and the faces all over the city and on the TV, too-the faces in the wars all around the world which somehow were one war and which somehow, insanely, I'd become a part of.

So I took a step forward, a slow, tentative step into that almost-visible dark. I began edging forward bit by bit, staring, listening. Unable to see-blind here-blind completely-I became aware of sounds first. It was not as silent in the cellar as I'd originally thought. There were still some muffled noises from the theater above. Voices-music-dim-impossible to make out. And there were other sounds, too: a steady hum of machinery, an electric buzz, a soft click or two, the hollow whisper that a furnace makes. My foot touched a wall, but when I reached out my hand to the right, I felt a space beside it, an opening, maybe, into another room, another hall. I couldn't tell. I went through. I went slowly on, feeling my way. I could sense death near me, like a figure walking beside me in the dark.

Soon I became aware of something else. A smell. It was faint but definite. Sour, stinging, organic. It was the smell of sweat and urine, the smell of fear: a human smell. I tried to follow it.

The scent grew thicker, harsher, step by step. My heart beat harder. I paused to sniff the air, to test it, trying to figure out the way to the source. Then I started moving again, reaching out with my hands to feel the way.