Page 28 of Avenger of Sins

“What the fuck?” he breathed. “This can’t be right.”

Gray stirred. Memories flickered behind their eyelids, gray and faded. Men, donkeys, mining carts, coal dust heavy in the air.

“A mine?” Caleb asked aloud for John’s benefit.

John slid down from the back of the truck to the concrete floor. “I think you’re right. They took an old mine and modified it for their use.”

“And what use is that?”

John’s mouth thinned. “Nothing good.”

Well, he wasn’t wrong about that. Caleb couldn’t think of anything a private military contractor would need a mountain fortress for that would qualify as “good.” Especially one headed by assholes like Harlow.

Sodium lights cast a strange orange glow over the scene. Another truck sat nearby, this one belonging to a food service company. Its rolling door also stood open.

The hair on the back of his neck prickled. “Why are there two service trucks just parked here, with no one else around? For that matter, why are they parked here in the first place? There’s no loading dock, so no way is this their usual stop.”

John pulled out his badge and clipped it to his belt. “I’d suggest heightened security procedures of some sort, but then we’d already be swarmed by guards.”

“This isn’t right.” Caleb took a step back, staring at the food truck. “Ryan must have come in the same way we did. This was all a trap, and we’ve stumbled right into it.”

Horror washed over John, threatening to make his hands shake. Kaniyar had warned Harlow that Ryan was coming, but instead of trying to keep him out, Harlow had seen it as a chance to recapture the only known telepath.

They’d thought they needed to save Harlow from Ryan…but it was the other way around.

“He wants Ryan back in a lab,” John said.

“And us?” Caleb looked worried. “He couldn’t know about us. Kaniyar wouldn’t just blab to someone outside of SPECTR that there are a pair of drakul on the way. You know, just in case Harlow wants to add us to his fucking menagerie. She’s the one who took down Forsyth for trying to pull this sort of shit.”

“There’s a leak.” His heart sank, though he didn’t know why he even bothered being disappointed in people anymore.

Night cocked her head. “Surely there would be mortals attempting to capture us if that was so.”

The enormous tunnel was still and silent, except for the occasional tick-tick from one of the pipes as it expanded or contracted in response to whatever flowed through it. Steam? Water? Something else he couldn’t guess?

Night had a point. Maybe there was no leak; maybe they’d sent a whole series of trucks waiting for Ryan to jump on one, and no one had realized they’d snuck in too. “We have to save Ryan,” John said, straightening his shoulders. “Whatever happens, we can’t let Harlow disappear him into this fortress, never to be seen again.”

Caleb didn’t look thrilled by the prospect, but he nodded. “Fine. What next?”

John scanned the walls. A number of smaller doors led off the main tunnel. They all looked sturdy, had electronic locks, and were inconveniently unlabeled.

No cameras, either, or at least none that he could see. They had to be there somewhere, though, right? Except as Night had said, no guards had rushed out to stop them from penetrating further into the base.

Something was wrong. No—everything was wrong. Everything hadbeenwrong, for longer than he’d ever guessed. He’d come here to save the man who’d ordered him tortured, and now they were standing in a trap, and…

He took a deep breath, trying to dispel the bands of panic closing around his lungs. He was no longer an unhoused child who could simply be disappeared; he was a SPECTR agent with a gun and a badge. Not to mention, he was backed up by two of the most powerful NHEs to ever walk the earth. Harlow should be the one afraid, not him.

“There aren’t any answers in this tunnel,” he said. “We should start trying doors, see if any are unlocked.” It seemed unlikely, but he didn’t want the drakul to start tearing the place apart until they had to. Hopefully he could talk to Harlow and get them all safely out of here; destroying the facility unnecessarily wouldn’t help with that. “I’ll check the couple back toward the entrance; you start on the others.”

“All right,” Caleb said. “Come on, Night.”

The two drakul drifted down the corridor, Night flickering from shadow to shadow. John turned from them and started back toward the closed tunnel entrance. Just as he reached for the first door, he heard a clunk from high overhead.

Faster than he could react—faster than even Gray could react—an enormous blast door slammed down just behind him, cutting him off from the two drakul.

It nearly knocked him from his feet, the enormous crash ringing so loudly in his ears he couldn’t hear anything else. The door had been in freefall; someone had disabled the safety features. He stumbled to the door, shaking his head as if that would clear it.

He was cut off from the two drakul. He looked around frantically, but spotted no way of raising the solid wall of steel again. The thing had to be two feet thick. Even Gray couldn’t easily get through it.

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