Chapter 8 #2
“Mates, married people, or lovers I guess…” I said, deciding to not confuse him with all the types of platonic kisses that existed as well.
I supposed that’s what we were, lovers of a sort, after what we’d shared at the Shaman’s home.
There was no denying the brewing, slightly explosive chemistry between us and I didn’t much feel like denying it.
This was the first man I’d ever encountered who didn’t mind my strong will, my protective urges, and my independent streak a mile wide.
It was much easier to focus on this than on how I’d failed to protect Naomi.
“Ah, lovers. Yes,” he responded. When his eyes took on this victorious cast, expression filled with satisfaction I squirmed.
I wasn’t sure I liked where his thoughts were headed, somewhere very intense by the looks of it.
Despite thinking I wasn’t going to deny the attraction between us only seconds ago, this look was a little too much for me to deal with.
I turned away to face the long, endless black hallway of perfectly smooth and unblemished stone.
“Let’s get moving. Looks to me like we have a long way to go.
” However where exactly we were headed now was uncertain to me.
Out of this mountain range, I supposed, so that we could meet up with Iave’s friends and the other humans.
Chest tight, and my mouth dry, I tried hard not to imagine what Naomi’s last moments might have been like. She deserved to be recovered and to get a proper burial but I knew that risking ourselves for a body retrieval was even more foolhardy than this ill-conceived rescue attempt had been.
Iave just grunted in response, the tip of his tail once again settling around my ankle and neither of us spoke much as we moved down the hallway. While not forgotten, because that was impossible, I put our kiss firmly to the back of my mind and focused on the here and now.
The endless hallway was just not the kind of walk that helped me settle my thoughts.
For every hundred steps I took, it felt like my mind flitted from one subject to the other like a pendulum.
Kissing Iave and all the scary, big things he was already making me feel, or Naomi’s horrible fate and our failure to keep her safe.
I felt wrung out and exhausted only fifteen minutes into our walk.
The tunnel seemed endless and bisected the mountain in what felt to me was an entirely straight line with not even the slightest hint of a slope or incline.
We were traveling completely horizontally and without any kind of alteration to our course.
Our sense of direction could be thoroughly thrown off by just how even and precise the tunnel was.
While the direction Iave had wanted to go in had been dustier, with broken bits of stone cluttering the floor, this part of the tunnel was completely undamaged.
Which made it all the more surprising when the outer edge of Iave’s flashlight brushed along a pile of rocks that had tumbled into the hallway from the left.
A large fissure came into sight that cracked and spiderwebbed along the wall and over the ceiling and for the first time I noticed a round crystal recessed into the rocky roof.
A soft humming noise reached my ears from beyond the slight collapse and Iave raised the flashlight to aim it further down the hall with a grim look on his face. “What is that?”
The light hit on a soft red glow in the distance and if I squinted just a little I could make out what appeared to be a grid of red light.
That had to be a trick of the mind; there was no way we’d stumbled upon an active security grid of some kind.
“I guess we’ll find out when we get there. You think that ceiling will hold?”
Iave gazed at the cracks in the wall and the pile of stones scattered across the tunnel floor with a thoughtful look on his face.
Then he ruined the studious image by yanking his ax free from the loop on his back and using the handle to poke at the rocks.
“Looks like it happened a long time ago, there’s dust on top of the stones. It will be fine.”
Those were famous last words but we had no other option than to move forward or backtrack the entire way, I didn’t much feel like walking for several hours again.
Besides, I was kind of curious if that really was a laser grid of some kind, and what it could possibly be protecting.
Artek’s technology was still powered so this wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but his home was carefully maintained and I had to assume that wasn’t the case here.
How old was this place, and how could something still be functioning?
By mutual understanding, Iave and I moved quietly past the fallen rocks to approach the lasers. He never put his ax away, holding it in both hands with a serious look on his face. The light he’d hooked to his belt, made shadows dance along the walls as we moved forward.
When we got closer I shook my head, “What is this place? This looks like high-end security. That laser grid looks dangerous, and there’s a door beyond it…
That looks like a vault door. How are we going to get past this?
” I’d seen bank vaults with less security actually, and I was no burglar, I had no idea how to disable a laser grid like this.
Iave moved closer, so close that I worried he might actually try to touch the red beams of light that shot from narrow holes in the walls and ceiling all the way across to a receptor on the other end.
Those lasers would probably burn, or worse, interrupting their flow would set off even more extreme security measures.
But Iave pulled a piece of string from his backpack and tossed that into the beams instead.
Instantly it burned up, the scent of burning leather filling the air as the piece disintegrated in the powerful laser.
“Ouch, I don’t think you can get past this…
I guess we’ll have to backtrack and go my way.
” He tilted his head to cast me this smirk that was almost evil, he was that satisfied.
“Oh no you don’t. Aren’t you the least bit curious as to what’s behind that door?
What if it’s treasure or something?” I suppose we could try to go back to this place at a later time when we’d met up with Iave’s friends and the other humans they had rescued.
At this point, I was almost struggling to remember their names and how many there had been.
Vera stood out because she was the one that woke me from stasis and she was kind of famous back on Earth.
Somehow, I had a feeling that Iave wouldn’t be convinced to come back here just to satisfy my curiosity.
I was still mulling over what was the right thing to do in this case when Iave tugged on my ankle with his tail.
“Over here, I think it might be a way to control the red lines of destruction.” I stifled a giggle over his name for the laser grid, apt as it was, and eagerly turned to look where he was pointing.
He was right, I hadn’t noticed it because the light show was far more impressive to look at, but he’d discovered a small panel in the nearby wall.
It was similar to thousands of access panels I’d used during my life.
A simple square-shaped pad with a dozen or so small little buttons.
Numbers maybe but whatever symbols had been etched on them, if there ever had been, had entirely disappeared.
“This is good, let me see if it still works!” I said, my fingers hovering over the ancient keypad.
What were the odds this thing still worked alongside the lasers?
Not good I’d bet but I wanted to try anyway, this had to be how the lasers were disabled.
Although, how many freaking combinations were they on a ten-button keypad?
A bazillion? This was probably extremely pointless.
It was promising when my fingers touched the pad and a silvery blue light lit up a tiny screen at the top.
It still had power, which meant it probably still controlled the lasers, but how did I figure out which buttons to press?
I started out by simply pressing one button and then looking to see if there was any change but it soon became obvious that nothing was working.
Iave was hovering behind me, leaning over my shoulder so his face was right next to mine.
“It’s not working.” I shot him a glare because that much was obvious and his Debbie Downer act wasn’t helping one bit.
It wasn’t like he knew how this worked any better than I did, in fact, I probably knew more.
“Let me try,” he rumbled but he didn’t push me aside, waiting patiently until I gave him a chance.
When I had to concede that just button-bashing wasn’t getting us anywhere, I finally stepped aside.
He could give it a shot, it wasn’t rocket science but this was probably futile, no matter how curious I was about what was behind the lasers.
When I stepped back I didn’t hover like he had but turned to face the grid of flickering red light and the steady hum it was emitting.
I studied the vault-like door beyond it curiously; was it me or was it cracked a bit?
I couldn’t quite tell with the light show in front, but it really did look like the door wasn’t properly closed.
A loud crack and a growl yanked my attention back to my brutish Naga friend and I gaped in shock at the sight.
Smoke was curling up around his shoulders but it wasn’t until he moved aside, guiltily glancing at me over his shoulder, that I could tell what he’d done.
His ax was sticking from the small control panel, smoke curling from the point of impact.
The panel was destroyed, but the laser grid still held steady.
“What the fuck, Iave? Why did you do that? Now there is no way we can turn that light show off,” I gestured at the lasers to emphasize my point and he hunched his shoulders in response, his expression going from guilty to surly.
“It was going nowhere,” he said, “And we’d be wasting time turning back.
Neither of these tunnels is going to lead us to Bitter Storm or an exit, we need to get out as soon as possible.
” And with those words, he grabbed hold of his ax, yanked as hard as he could and the entire control panel came loose with it. Yanked from the wall by brute force.
With a sizzle and a pop, the humming laser grid behind me died and the red glow that had bathed the walls disappeared.
Surprisingly, that had worked. So either Iave’s ancestors had failed to install fail saves for this kind of tampering, or those had already failed over time.
Either way, it was in our favor, because now we had a path forward once again.
I approached the vault door carefully. Finally able to confirm that it was indeed opened a crack; just enough for me to see the darkness that lay beyond it.
When Iave pressed closer, shining through the crack with his light, we could tell it was a smaller space with a second door across from us.
An airlock or sally port or something. The sight of it instantly filled me with a sense of foreboding.
“I’ll go first,” Iave said and with a grunt, he grabbed onto the side of the thick door and yanked it open.
I was impressed, that door was at least a foot thick and had to be extremely heavy but Iave had no trouble with it at all.
He was already at the next door by the time I’d stepped through, swinging that portal open with a little more effort.
When he darted through it my stomach dropped.
Oh no, what if the airlock still worked?
Opening my mouth I screamed a warning, but it was too late.