16. Chapter 16
Riley
Parker materialized from the darkness between the trees, Athena padding silently at his heels. His face was set in grim lines.
“There’s another entrance on the west slope, about half a mile from here. A tunnel that looks like a cave. Two soldiers in Apex uniforms are guarding the entrance, and active cameras are mounted above it.”
The storm front was a dark bruise on the horizon, growing thicker by the minute. The temperature dropped steadily as the sun vanished behind the ridge. My stomach clenched. Actual Apex soldiers all the way out here?
“Are the cameras wired?” Malcolm asked.
“Yeah. If we cut the power, they’ll go down. There might be motion sensors, but the storm will fuck with those too.”
The implant ran the variables. Can infiltrate, but move fast. Stay quiet. Medium risk of detection.
“Are they regular soldiers or operatives?”
“They don’t move or smell like operatives, but the older one’s a shifter. He’s also about fifty pounds overweight. The younger one is a Normal or maybe a Cog.” Parker turned to me. “Do you want to try and take them alive?”
A year ago, I would’ve said yes, maybe even before Roswell. Not now. “It’s too risky.” The implant suppressed my emotions, but the past year had changed me. Sometimes hard choices had to be made.
Parker kicked into Marine mode and ordered Bart and Freda to take out the power. “Find the junction box or transformer feeding this place, then kill it when the storm hits.”
Freda scowled. “I’m Riley’s bodyguard, which means I need to stay with her.”
He shook his head. “While I’m here, that’s my job.” When she opened her mouth to protest, he held up a hand. “We know each other inside and out. I trained her, and can protect her better than anyone.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Fine, but you’d better keep her alive. We’ll meet you at the tunnel entrance.”
The wind picked up, and the first fat raindrops spattered through the canopy. Thunder rolled in the distance, a long, low rumble that vibrated in my chest. During thunderstorms, my energy came alive, crackling along my veins and sending tingles down my spine.
When the rain hit in earnest, we moved out, Parker taking point and Malcolm covering behind.
Cora and I took the middle with the hellhounds flanking me.
The forest went dark fast, and the trail turned slick.
This wasn’t a soft summer rain, but a hard, gray cloudburst. When Parker glanced back to check on us, his eyes were crow-black.
The tunnel entrance came into view, a dark mouth cut into the hillside, partially concealed by undergrowth. Two figures stood in the shelter of the overhang. We took cover about fifty yards out, behind a fallen pine with a clear line of sight to the entrance.
Pulling my binoculars out, I tried to count their weapons in the darkness.
The older soldier held a standard MP5 on a sling.
The younger one had a sidearm and what looked like a comm unit clipped to his vest. Both wore the Apex Mentis black tactical gear.
Parker was right. The older soldier did look about fifty pounds overweight.
Something crashed in the forest to our left, making my heart lurch as Malcolm brought his gun up.
I crouched lower, and we all froze as a bull moose came lumbering through the trees.
His head swung up, and he froze when he sensed us.
We stayed perfectly still as he sized us up.
The rain drummed on the dead wood, steady and loud as Mangus pressed against my leg, his body radiating that supernatural heat.
If the moose decided to charge, our cover would be blown. He turned his head to the side, his massive antlers scraping against a low-hanging branch. Then his head went down, and he continued on, likely looking for shelter from the storm.
My heart rate settled, and I slowly relaxed. Lightning cracked directly overhead, a white-hot fork that lit the entire hillside in stark, blinding detail.
Then the lights went out, and the camera’s red eye died. The guards straightened, their postures shifting from bored to alert. The older one reached for his comm unit.
“Now,” Malcolm murmured.
Parker didn’t hesitate. His crow burst from the undergrowth, blending with the night. He flew in a tight circle above the guards’ heads, cawing loudly enough to be heard over the rain.
The younger guard tried to track Parker’s flight with his gun, the older one barking something I couldn’t hear. The distraction bought a few seconds, and Malcolm moved in like smoke.
I lost sight of him for three heartbeats, and then he was behind the older guard, one arm locking around the man’s throat.
The shifter bucked and tried to rip away, but Malcolm ended it quickly, slicing his combat knife across the older soldier’s neck in a clean, brutal cut.
Blood hit the wet rock in a dark spray, instantly diluted by the rain.
The guard went limp, his weapon clattering to the ground.
I aimed at the other soldier’s head and wondered for a split second whether he had parents who would mourn him and a girlfriend or boyfriend back home. Freda materialized beside him and raised her SIG, pressing it against his temple. The rain muffled the shot as his body slumped to the ground.
Malcolm and Parker strode forward, searched them, then dragged the bodies into the trees. Parker picked up the younger guard’s knit cap, his eyes shadowed.
We stood inside the mouth of the tunnel, sheltered from the rain.
My black water-resistant jacket was soaked through, and my damp, cold skin prickled.
We all switched on our headlamps, and I squinted to see.
The air coming out of the tunnel was surprisingly warm.
A shiver went through me as Mangus growled, low and subsonic, the sound vibrating through my body.
“Stay sharp,” Freda murmured.
The tunnel was about ten feet wide, its walls slick with mineral deposits that sparkled in our headlamps. Water dripped, and the warm air carried a sharp mineral scent.
The area opened into a wider concrete corridor, similar to the one we’d found under the hatch. Overhead, someone had removed the fluorescent light fixtures and installed new lighting, but the walls were the same industrial gray, stained with decades of moisture.
“We need to split up and clear the facility,” Parker muttered. “Freda, take Bart and head that way. Malcolm, you and Cora take the opposite tunnel. Riley’s with me. Twenty minutes, then we rendezvous back here. We need to check for other soldiers or personnel. Watch out for traps.”
Freda and Bart disappeared down the eastern corridor, their headlamps bobbing in the darkness until they rounded a corner and were gone.
Malcolm gave me a big shit-eating smile. “Stay safe, bonny lass.” Then he and Cora were gone.
The western corridor branched twice. Parker, the hellhounds, and I took the left fork, which sloped gently downward. Parker knelt next to Athena and held up the knit cap he’d taken from the dead soldier.
“Search,” he told her. She tilted her head and took off down the western corridor.
We followed them, and the air grew warmer, almost stuffy.
A few minutes later, two gunshots went off, then screaming, followed by a wet crunching noise.
We moved toward the sound and came upon Athena licking blood off her mouth with an abnormally long tongue.
An Apex Mentis soldier in tactical gear lay dead at her feet, the man’s neck ripped out.
By the time we met back at our assigned meeting spot, Malcolm had taken out two other soldiers, but we didn’t find anyone else in the facility. Freda turned to Parker.
“We ran across a storage room full of medical equipment back the way we came. Riley, you need to take a look. We need to start documenting and cataloging what we find.”
The concrete gave way to rough-hewn stone, reinforced with steel supports. This part of the facility predated the Cold War bunker by decades. Parker and I exchanged a glance.
“This looks like mining infrastructure.” I ran my hand along the damp stone. “I think they built the bunker into an existing mine shaft. There are hundreds of thousands of old mine shafts throughout the Western states.”
Parker nodded. “Makes sense. Cheaper than digging from scratch. It’s warm in here.”
My skin tingled, and my body felt antsy and overstimulated. “There are underground springs all over this region. Yellowstone is a hotspot, and the basaltic and rhyolitic magma is highly explosive–”
“Give it to me in English,” Parker interrupted.
“The energy and power in this region make my whole body vibrate. Mangus feels it too. If someone figured out how to artificially create Cog abilities, this would be the ideal place to do it since we power our magic from the molecules in the air.”
Parker’s mouth went tight. “Got it. You okay?”
I held out my hand, which was shaking a little. “Yes, but I feel like I’m overdosing on energy.”
We came to a large cavern with a heavy steel door. The lock had been replaced with a digital keypad mounted beside the handle. Parker pushed the door, and it swung open on well-maintained hinges.
The space beyond was large, maybe forty feet square, its ceiling supported by thick timber beams. Crates lined the walls, stacked three and four high, each stenciled with shipping codes and handling instructions.
I moved to the nearest crate and swept my headlamp across the label, then checked a few others as my stomach dropped. Several crates were stamped with the Apollo Genetics logo.
“These came from ApGen. Centrifuges, PCR machines, sequencing hardware.” I moved down the line, reading labels. “Cell culture incubators. Cryogenic storage units. This is a full molecular biology lab, still in crates.”
“Jesus fuck, I hate it when we’re right. They’re building another Roswell.”
“It’s worse.” I crouched beside another crate, this one already unpacked. A Holter monitor sat nestled in custom foam. Beside it was a modified EKG machine. “They have equipment to monitor and probably increased electrical currents in the body.”
Parker whistled low. “You said Marlowe has Compulsor abilities now. Just what that fucker needs. This equipment is worth a fortune.”
The implant processed the implications with cold, brutal efficiency. Apollo Genetics was retrofitting an abandoned Cold War bunker atop an energy hotspot, beneath a national park. This was the same equipment used to implant shifters and to modify supernaturals into cold, robotic operatives.
I pulled out my phone and started taking pictures and video, methodically documenting each crate, label, and of equipment. Parker moved to the other corner and started doing the same.
“I’ll get the dates and shipping manifests,” he muttered. “You do the scientific shit.”
What else was still out there? We’d found this lab before they could set it up and activate it.
Before they could bring in subjects, start cutting people open, and shoving hardware into their spines.
I wanted to rage and destroy as fury and horror crawled through me.
The implant hissed to life, sending glutamate through my system.
My emotions receded and I continued documenting as time passed.
The explosion tore through the facility with the force of a freight train hitting a concrete wall.
The sound hit me first, a concussive blast that rattled my teeth, followed by a wave of pressure that knocked me off my feet.
I hit the concrete floor hard, my headlamp flickering, and for a disorienting second, the world was dust and darkness.
My ears rang as I sat up and looked around. Something heavy crashed nearby.
Parker was on his feet before I was, squatting beside me. “You hurt?” I shook my head as he hauled me up by my arm. “East corridor,” he barked. “Let’s go.”
We ran. The corridors were choked with dust, our headlamps cutting thin cones through the gloom. The smell hit me first. Cordite, burning plastic, and something sharper, organic, and wrong. My lungs burned.
We found them twenty yards down the eastern branch. The corridor had collapsed in one section, timbers and concrete debris heaped across the floor. In a wider junction where the corridor opened into some kind of storage room, Cora sat slumped against the wall.
When I saw Malcolm, I started praying. No, please god, no.