Although in this particular case, I not only needed to know who Martin was but where we were going.
Pictures snapped into my mind, providing a glimpse of a thickset man with a flat nose and oddly shaped eyes, and what looked to be an intersecting series of round metal and sand tunnels. If the latter was part of an old military bunker, then it was one I'd never seen before.
“Are we going to beat the storm?” I asked.
He glanced at the radar and screwed his nose up. “It'll be nipping at our heels before we reach the compound, I think.”
The hover slowly spun around, and then the big engines kicked in and we rumbled forward. Thankfully, it was too damn loud in the cabin to allow much talking, so I looked through the door’s small portal, trying to find something remotely familiar. But even the few stunted trees we passed bore no resemblance to anything I'd seen before.
The wind picked up, buffeting the big craft and sending it sliding sideways. The stabilizers kept us upright but from the little I knew of these types of hovers, they weren't designed for use in any sort of dust storm—a fact borne out a few seconds later when an amber light began to blink on the console. The intake valves were losing efficiency.
The driver responded by increasing our speed. Maybe he thought he could outrun the problem, even though the storm was a huge red mass that now dominated half the radar screen.
As a red light joined the amber one, the comms unit on the console crackled to life, and a harsh voice said, “Identify.”
The driver hit a switch. “Pickup three, Lyle and Banks.”
“Code?”
“Two-five-three-zero.”
“Access granted, guidance on. Open in five.”
Lyle punched another button on the console, switching to auto mode, and then leaned back. “It's going to be a bitch of a night to be on surface duty.”
Which suggested we were headed underground, and that meant we might indeed be dealing with another old military base. The three bases in which we déchet had been created had certainly used the earth as protection and, though I hadn’t seen any of them, I knew other human military installations had also buried their main centers deep.
The hover swung left and slowed. Up ahead, an odd sort of turret emerged from the ground. Sand poured off its domed top and slithered down its metal sides. As it rose higher, I realized it was some sort of elevator. Two guards wearing breathing apparatus stood on either side of the open doorway, but there didn't appear to be any cameras or scanners in the shadows beyond them—which didn't mean anything given my companion's comment. I might not be able to see any other security measures, but they were obviously around here somewhere.
The hover came to a halt and settled onto its skirts. The driver rolled the neck of his uniform up over his mouth and nose, then opened the doors and got out. I recorded my position then grabbed the pack and followed. The wind hit me immediately, throwing me several paces sideways before I could catch my balance. Sand stung my face and hands and felt like stones as it pounded my body. The air was so thick that I could barely see the hover, let alone the driver or the elevator. Then I remembered the eye visor and quickly flicked the switch. The world sprung into focus again.
I slung the pack over my shoulder and followed Lyle into the elevator. One guard stepped out into the storm and headed toward the vehicle. The other placed a rather gnarled-looking hand against the control panel; his prints were scanned and the elevator began to descend.
I returned the visor to normal vision and looked around. There definitely weren't any security measures aside from the guard, which was odd—just as there was something decidedly odd about the guard. While the breathing mask covered his entire face, his domed head was almost reptilian, and the stray tufts of pale yellow that poked out from the top looked more like the strands found on a wire brush than any sort of hair. His uniform was bulky and loose, giving little indication of his body shape, but his spine was so badly curved the top part of his body angled sharply away from his lower. His scent rather reminded me of meat left too long out in the sun, but the undertones were once again human in origin, even as his reptilian dome suggested otherwise.
Of course, smelling human didn’t mean he was. We lures had been designed with the ability to alter our base scent, and if either Dream or Cohen were a surviving déchet scientist or a handler—as we now suspected at least one of them was—then they’d be aware of that skill.
The one thing this man couldn’t be, however, was a surviving déchet—not when he was so deformed. The scientists involved in the Humanoid Development Program had been merciless; if a déchet had been imperfect in any way, they were killed and their DNA carefully studied to see what had gone wrong.
Which meant he was either a life form I'd never come across before—and surely nature could not be that cruel—or the trio had been playing around with DNA and pathogens far longer than we'd presumed.
And that was a scary thought.
The elevator continued to drop. I had no idea how deep we were going, as there were no level indicators. Maybe this base only had the one, although that would be rather unusual if it was another repurposed military base. Most did have several levels, if only for security reasons.
The elevator finally came to a bouncy stop. The guard pulled his hand away from the console and the doors opened, revealing a small landing and stairs that led down to a massive circular room with a domed ceiling supported by thick metal struts that arched across the space and met in the middle. There were five tunnels leading off it; the one directly opposite looked big enough to take large vehicles, but the other four were smaller in diameter. There was a multitude of wooden boxes and pallets of plastic-wrapped items stacked in haphazard piles, and rusty-looking forklifts were scooting about, some of them driving loads into the smaller tunnels and others returning from them. This area was obviously some sort of receiving bay.
What I didn't see were any sort of additional security measures. Did they believe the sand hid them so well nothing else was needed, or were the measures here, but simply very well disguised?
Instinct suggested the latter. And that presented a problem, given I couldn't get around what I couldn't see.
Lyle had paused at the bottom of the stairs to allow a forklift to pass, so I clattered down to catch up with him. “Where's Martin likely to be at this hour?”
“Where he always fucking is—in supplies.” He made a vague motion toward the tunnels on the right then threw me a sour look. “And don't forget it's your shout at the bar tonight. No feigning illness again.”
“Shout” wasn't a term I was familiar with but it obviously had something to do with drinking and alcohol. While shifters did drink, they didn't do it to excess, as the humans seemed to. Which was probably just as well given a drunken shifter could cause a whole lot more damage to flesh and furniture than a human ever could.
“Right,” I said, and walked off.
Aside from the buzz of the forklifts, this place was strangely quiet. The yellowish lights dotting the dome high above lit some sections of the sandstone walls but cast others into shadow. The air was cool and somewhat stale, suggesting the purifiers weren't working at full capacity. Maybe that was why the guards had been wearing breathing apparatus—although it didn't explain why everyone else wasn't.
I reached the first of the two tunnels on this side of the room and paused. There was no guide to tell where it went, and the tunnel itself curved sharply away from the entrance, making it impossible to see what might lie up ahead. I moved on to check the other tunnel. It, too, was decidedly void of any useful information.
I pulled the small dart gun from the pack and then headed in. I couldn’t afford to linger, given the woman I was impersonating would obviously know her way around this place. The last thing I needed was to attract unwanted attention.
Once again the ceiling lights were dull, creating smalls pools of yellow surrounded by shadows. There were no doors cut into the thick metal walls and no sound other
than the soft echo of my steps.
Then, from somewhere up ahead, came a sound so soft human hearing wouldn't have caught it. It was nothing as clear as a footstep, but more a scrape, as if something had dragged briefly across the metal flooring. I frowned, my gaze sweeping the shadows, seeing nothing, sensing nothing.
The odd sound came again. Unease stirred, and my grip on the dart gun tightened as I continued on.
The noise echoed a third time. Tension wound through me, but I resisted the urge to stop. The tunnel began to curve to the right, and the shadows became thicker—so thick, in fact, that they chopped off the pool of light that puddled underneath one of the overheads.
That darkness wasn't natural, I realized abruptly. It was someone hiding behind a shield of shadows. That was why this place was so oddly lit.
My fingers twitched against the dart’s trigger, but I resisted the urge to fire and continued past that odd patch of darkness. Once I was sure there were no cameras or other guards hidden in the shadows further along the tunnel, I turned and fired. The drug on the dart’s tip was fast acting. In little more than a couple of seconds, there was a soft clang as something—someone—hit the metal floor.
The shadows remained clustered around the guard, but a quick pat down revealed the presence of some sort of device connected to his chest plate by several wires. Once I broke that connection, the shadows evaporated, revealing him to be another of the masked guards. I pulled off his breathing apparatus; his features were a twisted mess that was half human and half reptilian, and his skin was brown with odd patches of scales that were almost fishlike.
Whatever else this man was, he wasn't a product of natural selection. He was either a rift survivor or a result of human engineering.
If the latter applied, then maybe the only reason Sal and his partners hadn't acted on their mad plans before now was the simple fact that they’d been unable to recreate the success of the déchet program. It also meant that these lizard men, however ill-formed, might not be the only ones successfully raised to adulthood.
He was beginning to wheeze, his body shuddering as he struggled to suck in enough air. Either his lungs were malformed or the weird mix of his DNA meant he simply couldn't survive on regular air. And while I had no desire to let him suffer any longer than necessary, I also needed information. I couldn't keep wandering around this place aimlessly. I hesitated, and then touched his face; his skin was cold, clammy, and unlike anything I'd ever felt before.
I shuddered, even as information began to flow. Within seconds I had a somewhat fractured mental map of the base; this tunnel led to the bunkhouse and the medical facilities, which was perhaps why my approach hadn’t been challenged. The stock and supplies area was in the first tunnel, but it was the information on the largest tunnel that snagged my immediate attention. It apparently led to what the guard’s memories simply knew as research and production.
I pushed a little deeper and caught various images of needles being injected into his arm. We knew the trio had been intent on developing a pathogen capable of altering a vampire’s base physiology so that they no longer had to fear sunlight, but maybe they were also trying to find a shortcut to creating an army with the strength and speed of the déchet.
I could only hope that this poor man was an indication of how far they’d yet to go with the latter.
But maybe that was only because they were, unfortunately, a whole lot closer to achieving the former. The children they’d stolen—all of whom were either rift survivors or the children of survivors—had been their test subjects for such a pathogen. And at least one of those children—Jonas’s niece, Penny—had recently developed vampire-like tendencies while showing no fear of light.
If they’d developed a pathogen capable of turning a shifter or a human into a vampire, how far off could they be from being able to do the reverse?
Not far at all, if the recent attack on Chaos—the ramshackle city that clung to Central’s metal curtain wall—was any indication. Neither firelight nor regular light had affected the vampires who’d gone there to retrieve Penny, but at least the UVs had still turned them to ash.
I removed the spent dart from his arm then replaced his breathing apparatus and sat him upright against the wall. Hopefully, given his restless movements earlier, he’d put his collapse down to exhaustion and wouldn’t report the incident. Even if he did, how likely was it that he’d connect his collapse to Banks, given it had happened after I’d walked past him?
I reattached the wires on his chest unit and, as the thick shadows wrapped around him again, thrust up and strode back down the tunnel. No one paid me any attention as I walked across the loading bay, but the minute I drew close to the entrance to the larger tunnel, a light flashed on, bathing the entire entrance in eye-watering brightness. A burly, pale-skinned man stepped forward and held out a small scanner.
“Present your chip, soldier.”
I raised my right arm and watched as the screen flashed red.
“You haven't the clearance to proceed into this area,” he growled.
“I know, but I’ve been ordered to take this bag to Martin.”
The guard pointed with his chin at the tunnels behind me. “Martin is over in supplies, not here.”
“And they told me I’d find him in research three.”
My gaze swept the shadows hugging the other side of the entrance. There was a second guard standing watch, but the fierceness of the lights made it impossible to see what other security measures might be here. Which meant I could risk wrapping myself in light to sneak past them, but if there were bioscanners set into the walls of this entrance, I’d be in all sorts of trouble.
“If they said that, they’re fucking idiots,” he said.
“So, he really hasn’t come through here?”
“No, but it wouldn't matter if he had, because your ass can go no further.” The guard’s tone was impatient. “So leave, before I decide to report you.”
I didn't argue. I just spun on my heel and walked back to the tunnel that led to the supplies area, but stopped the minute the shadows wrapped around me again.
What in Rhea was I going to do now?
I crossed my arms and leaned against the wall, studying the loading bay and the movements of the various forklifts. Rather interestingly, none of them went into the larger tunnel. In fact, right now they seemed to be doing nothing more than shifting the various pallets and boxes into a stack on one side of it. Given the tunnel was obviously designed to allow trucks passage, perhaps the intention was to transport it all at once rather than piecemeal.
But what was in those boxes, and where exactly were they being taken?
There was only one way to find the answer to either question. I pushed away from the wall and sucked in the energy of the shadows, just as I had the light earlier. It filtered swiftly through every inch of me until my whole body vibrated with the weight and power of it. The vampire within my DNA swiftly embraced that darkness, becoming one with it, until it stained my whole being and took over. It ripped away flesh, muscle, and bone, until I was nothing more than a cluster of matter. Even my clothes and the backpack became part of that energy.
Now that I was hidden from ordinary sight, I swept out of the tunnel but kept close to the wall and the shadows that hugged it. Light was the enemy of this form—while it would never harm me as it did the vampires, it could certainly tear away the shadows and revert me back to flesh and blood.
I slowed as I neared the stack of boxes. It wasn’t exactly surprising to discover that most of them bore government and military IDs. Both Cohen and Dream had inherited the ability to body shift from Sal when the three of them and a wraith had been caught in a rift. While Cohen had taken over the identity of the man who’d owned and run Winter Halo, Dream had usurped the position of someone in Central’s governing body. Unfortunately, we currently had no idea whether she merely worked in Government House, or if she was on the ruling council itself. I rather suspected the latter, if only be
cause an audit would have surely picked up the amount of missing equipment and who knew what else lying in both these boxes and the ones I’d discovered at the other old military bases.
I detoured around a puddle of light to inspect the half dozen pallets stacked at the end of the boxes, and discovered the one thing I'd been hoping not to. Intrauterine pods. Six of them, in fact.
A deep sense of horror stirred. While I’d discovered similar pods in other bases, I'd thought—perhaps foolishly—that with the deaths of both Sal and Cohen, Dream would put aside that part of their plan and just concentrate on the immunity portion. But the transfer stamps on these pods held yesterday's date, which was two days after I'd exposed their machinations at Winter Halo.
Rhea help me, there could be babies in this place. Youngsters. Just as there’d been in my bunker when the shifters had unleashed the gas that had killed them all.
I took a deep, shuddering breath and tried to ignore the painful rush that always rose when I thought about that dreadful day. But the memories would not be ignored, and once again I witnessed the disintegrating features of the little ones who’d been in my charge, heard their screams as the Draccid gas that had been fed into our air systems ate at their tiny bodies. Could feel the weight of them in my arms as Cat, Bear, and I tried—and failed—to get them out of the nursery and save as many as we could.
We hadn’t known it was useless, that there was no safety to be found anywhere in the bunker. Not until the Draccid began eating at me, anyway, and Cat and Bear had crawled into my arms to die. I was the sole survivor that day, and only because lures had been designed to be immune to all known toxins and poisons. We had to be, because that’s how we usually killed our targets once we’d bled them of information.