Peter Lerangis - The Tomb of Shadows

As the alarm blared all over the compound, the chaos seemed to multiply in the quadrangle. Officers were screaming at subordinates, commandos were shoving KI staff toward the dorm. No one seemed to care about four more running people.

We crouched behind the squat, square building and peered into the window. Exactly two Massa were in there, pounding on keyboards. “Skeleton crew,” Cass commented.

Torquin stood, gesturing us to follow. He circled the building and strolled through the building’s front door, which had been blasted open. “I help, fellow Massa?” he boomed.

The two men turned. One of them nearly spit out his coffee. “Whoa, nice uniform! What have you been eating, dude?”

Torquin grabbed them by their collars, lifted them out of their seats, and butted their heads together. “Pound cake,” he said.

Aly slid into a seat in front of a console. Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Code flashed across the screen at impossible speed.

“You can actually read that?” I said.

“Shhh …” The scrolling stopped, and the screen filled with random letters and symbols. “Okay, there it is … House of Wenders, sublevel seven. That’s Bhegad’s EP.”

“That’s the underground lab, where they made Shelley the Loculus shell,” Cass exclaimed.

“Where do you read that, Aly?” I asked, staring at the gobbledygook.

“It’s in hexadecimal notation,” she said. “Those combinations each represent letters and characters.”

I stared at her. “You scare me.”

“Actually, I scare me, too.” She turned from the screen, a concerned look on her face. “I wouldn’t have been able to read that even a week ago. Hurray for G7W. Now let’s see if we can scare the Massa …” Swinging around back to the keyboard, she said, “They will have access to our trackers now, right? So before we get Bhegad, why don’t I just zap the KI’s tracking machine—along with some other choice equipment … hee-hee …”

“We can’t just run across the courtyard to the House of Wenders,” Cass said. “There are tons of Massa. Dark or not, someone will recognize us, just like that guard did.”

“Go the long way,” Torquin suggested.

“On it.” Aly’s fingers were a blur. “Overloading the Comestibule circuits … disabling the breakers … should cause a small explosion there. Okay. On the count of three, the lights should go out everywhere except the House of Wenders. The Massa goons who aren’t heading to the dorm will be drawn to the explosion in the Comestibule, buying us some space and time.”

“Wait. What if someone is actually in the kitchen?” I asked.

Torquin looked skeptical. “The long way is better.”

Aly sighed. “I figure that the kitchen-cafeteria is the one place people won’t be during a Massa attack. Let’s hope I’m right. Ready? One … three!”

She leaped from the seat. A distant blast rocked the earth. I staggered and fell to the floor. “I thought you said a small explosion!”

“There goes five fifty-pound sacks of chocolate chips,” Cass said mournfully.

Torquin pushed us all outside. We ducked into a shadow, watching smoke rise from the Comestibule.

Together we sprinted across the compound, which was now pitch-dark, save for the lights in the windows of the House of Wenders, directly across from us. It loomed over the campus, as solemn and stately as a courthouse, its wide marble stairs topped by seven columns. The KI flag that flew on a pole in front was now tattered and blackened. As a group of five Massa raced down the stairs in confusion, Torquin called out to them: “Attack! Comestibule! Go!”

They stomped off toward the commotion, and we headed into the grand entrance hall, racing around the statue of the dinosaur that had spooked me so much when I’d first walked in here. The elevator in the back of the hall was empty. We piled inside and plunged downward to subbasement 7. Torquin held tight to his rifle.

The door opened directly into an enormous domed chamber, lit by a string of buzzing fluorescent lights. Torquin stepped inside, his bare feet slapping on the concrete. The room was full of abandoned workstations, their monitors glowing with the KI symbol.

“Professor?” I called out.

My voice echoed, unanswered, into the dome.

“Empty,” Torquin announced.

“I think we all see that,” Aly remarked.

“Any other suggestions where to go?” Cass said.

With a soft whoosh, the elevator door shut behind us. As I turned instinctively, the room plunged into sudden darkness.

A low, focused hissss came from the ceiling. Three emergency lights flicked on, casting everything in a sickly bluish-white glow. I felt a tickle in my throat. Cass began coughing, then Aly.

Torquin fell to his knees, his eyes red. Quickly he began ripping apart sections of his already ripped pants, then throwing the pieces to us. “Put on … nose!” he said, gasping for breath.

“What’s happening?” Aly said, doubling over with violent coughs.

Torquin jammed the fabric over his face. “Tear … gas!”

I SANK TO the floor. My knees hit the concrete with a sharp crack, my eyes began to water, and I felt as if someone had crawled into my throat with a set of knives.

Torquin was struggling with his rifle, looking toward the back of the room. There, a lab room door was swinging open to reveal a figure wearing a white coat and a gas mask. As the person came closer, Torquin took aim.

I could see a black-and-gray ponytail protruding out from under the mask. As Torquin sneezed, the person bolted to the left.

Aly was wheezing, convulsed into a ball. Cass looked dead. I tried to keep my eyes open, breathing directly into the fabric. I crawled around, following the masked figure, who was grabbing at the wall as if looking for something. I managed to close my fingers around an ankle and pulled. As the person fell to the floor, I reached up and yanked off the mask.

“No!” screamed a voice. “Don’t!”

I was face-to-face with Dr. Bradley, Professor Bhegad’s personal physician.

And traitor.

“You’re”—I gasped—“one of them, too?”

I thought my lungs would ball up and burst. As I fell back, Dr. Bradley sank beside me, red-faced and choking, grasping desperately for her mask.

With a grunt, she yanked it from my fingers. Climbing to her feet, she slipped the mask back on and steadied herself by grabbing the wall.

I blinked like crazy but I was too weak to stand. Dr. Bradley was pulling open a metal panel on the wall, flipping a switch.

She swung around toward me. My eyes were fluttering shut. Tear gas? I didn’t think so. This was some other poison. I was drifting into unconsciousness, fighting to stay alert.

The last thing I saw before blacking out was Dr. Bradley looming over me like a colossus, reaching down toward my head.

* * *

I awoke next to a corpse.

Or at least that’s what I assumed it was—a body draped under a white sheet on a slablike table. I was lying on the floor. Rows of fluorescent lights beamed overhead, buzzing softly. As I tried to sit up, my head pounded.

“Easy, Jack,” Dr. Bradley’s voice said. “We’re not quite done with Cass.”

Blinking, I turned. Her back was facing me as she leaned over another table. Her ponytail spilled over the back of her lab coat. I could see Cass’s shoes sticking out from one side.

“What happened?” I said.

“Dr. Bradley thought we were Massa,” Aly’s voice replied. I got to my feet to see her, and my head throbbed with pain. She was sitting with Torquin against the wall near the door. Both of them were red in the face. I figured I was, too, from the aftereffects of the poison gas. “That’s why she activated the gas. When she realized who we were, she turned off the jets.”