Page 57 of Amethyst Flame
Be patient,Dane had said.Waiting is the hardest part.
Actually, trusting them was, but I got his point. This was torture. My guts were shredding, blood fizzing, and it seemed to go on and on when in real life only minutes were passing.
The building would be emptying, leaving me inside, in this box. Which felt like a cage. Oh god, had I gone and locked myself in a cage? Willingly?
I yelped and staggered when the elevator moved again—down down down—Jacob taking me to the basement level where yesterday I had sensed space on the other side of the elevator. I turned around, back to the door.
I saw Dane in my memory saying,Now use your moths.
This part of the op was on me because this secret area was secure from outside tampering. Jacob hadn’t been able to locate it on any internal system.
I placed my palm on the back wall of the elevator as if it were any door in Legendelirium, and sensed that strange containment field, not unlike the one I’d found in Palm Springs. But now that I could examine it, I found a latticework with minuscule punctures. BantaMatrix might be the leader in creating nanotechnology, but it seemed Dane’s people were the boss of keeping bugs out.
A moment later, the back wall of the box slid to the side, revealing a right-left stretch of silent white hallway.
I gave the [search] command, and my moths flew off in a faintly purple gust to do my bidding, like a warm wind whipping around me.
Tentatively, I stepped out into the lab as if I were my EldWitch self again, searching some secret castle for a forbidden elixir or an amulet of power.
Moving quickly is key,Dane had told me.In and out. No fooling around.
But what he’d meant by that, I didn’t know. Did he think I wanted to hang out down here, even deeper than where I’d almost died, and leave funny pics of lounge-singing David Hasselhoff on the researchers’ computer lockscreens?
Pass, thanks.
My moths located a shielded monolith, a silvery-white containment that reminded me of a druid stone, narrow, rectangular, and standing about eight feet high in the center of the room. Consoles circled it.
I wove my way through the space, around desks, and finally into the circle, stepping softly, though the place was deserted. No one could hear me. The lab seemed to be holding its breath. Or maybe that was me.
My moths pinged me with more information. The monolith had the same flawed shielding as the entry to this sub-basement.
So, yay. Like Big Yay. BantaMatrix was officially behind the curve on nanotech deterrents. Maybe I wouldn’t die today.
I placed my hand on the white surface and sent my hive to work.
The monolith didn’t open; it dissolved like when ashes were touched after a terrible fire. Inside, suspended on a narrow rod, was a familiar vial. Exactly like the one that had been in play during my last encounter with BantaMatrix when Alling had kidnapped me.
I grabbed it, turned, looked around at the very serious consoles encircling me, debated putting Hasselhoff on the computer lockscreens anyway…but, no, I was a professional.
I started back to the elevator to make my stealthy escape and walked right into an invisible wall. Or, rather, a containment fieldexactlylike the one my hive had encountered in Palm Springs. My butterflies brushed up against it, but I could not penetrate its surface. It hadn’t been here when I walked in; obviously it had been triggered. This was officially not good at all.
Fuck.I hit it with my fist. Pain screamed from the bones of my knuckles.
Think through the problem,Dane had said.
Yeah. Okay. Maybe don’t break your hand. I had better weapons. I stepped back and with a [blast] command, tried to blow my way through the containment. A violet pulse spread out on the wall but then fell to the floor into a fine, gray drizzle.
Panic sent my mind spinning. I drew a breath to hit it with everything I had but remembered at the last second…
Don’t exhaust yourself,he’d told me.Save your energy and your ammunition for an opportunity.
And I was stuck. So just stand here? Waiting to die?
Fuck fuck fuck!
Adley Ruskin entered the lab, effortlessly sophisticated in a dove-gray pantsuit. When she tilted her head, studying me, the console lights glinted on the short crop of her ash-blond hair.
She was so going to kill me. My mom was right. I wasn’t trained for this. I didn’t know what I was doing. How could someone like me really help?
