41. Jack
FORTY-ONE
JACK
The cave was unlike any Jack had ever seen before.
Living the life of a tracking sorcerer, he had been inside his fair share of caves and dens.
There was no denying that this one was different.
The cave walls had been smoothed on all sides.
It was like a machine had come boring a hall right through the mountain.
Jack’s right hand caressed the wall as he walked deeper and deeper into the abyss.
His left hand held the handle of his wand that illuminated the dark passage with emerald light.
Even when his eyes did adjust to the darkness, the visibility was slim at best. Come on, don’t be a baby, Jack said to himself. Elizabeth already went in before you and she doesn’t even have a weapon.
Jack continued down the path for a few dozen yards, the light from his wand feeling smaller and smaller by the second. Then his hand hit something metallic. He stopped in his tracks. Marcus nearly ran into him.
“What is it, Jack? Do you see something?”
“There—there’s something here,” Jack said, examining the smooth rock wall, able to make out a square box with a lever in place. Jack gripped the handle and flipped the switch. There was a spark, then bright light flooded the cave.
Jack threw his arms over his eyes as the inhuman light blinded him. Not knowing what to expect, Jack blinked as fast as he could, willing his eyes to adjust and examine the scene in front of him.
Disbelief seized at his heart. The hall they were in opened into a large room. There were mage lights everywhere; strung up on hanging stalactites, mounted on holders and even strung up along the walls like Jack had seen in the Queen’s palace.
Jack had only a moment to appreciate the mage light. The chamber the cave opened up into was far more interesting. The room reminded Jack of Edison’s lab in New Hope. This one, however, was set up with beakers and tubes of all shapes and sizes.
“See, I told you guys. Cool, right?”
Jack saw Elizabeth lounging on top of one of the tables, twirling her hair.
“It’s very cool, Elizabeth. Good job. We wouldn’t have found this place without you.”
“Thanks, Jack.” Elizabeth’s face turned red, then a huge smile split her lips. “You can probably imagine with everyone thinking I’m crazy, I don’t receive words of affirmation often.”
“Are you saying you’re not crazy?” Jack stopped in his tracks and looked at Elizabeth.
“No, I’m definitely loony, but it’s nice to hear praise from someone other than my sister.”
Jack walked down a few steps into the large room to his right.
It was a scene straight out of any mad scientist book Jack had ever read.
Ninety percent of the equipment in the room Jack had never seen; others, he had only heard about.
Scales, burners, magnifying glasses—they were all there—and as Jack traveled deeper and deeper into the room, something else was becoming clear.
Whoever had been in the lab and whatever had been happening didn’t end well. Broken glass began to show up, and blood spattering on the floor and walls begged a dozen questions at once.
“Dad, are you seeing this?”
“Yes. It looks like whoever was here took off in a hurry, leaving almost everything behind. Jack, take a look at this.”
Jack walked to the opposite side of the room, where his father was examining a large cage and two tables with straps.
The table was covered in gore. The cage looked like it had been bent from the inside out.
Memories of the strange unicorn they came across as well as the superhuman assassin they encountered on the mage locomotive forced themselves to the front of Jack’s mind.
“Do you think—do you think they were doing experiments here?”
“I don’t know.” Marcus took a deep breath then let it out slowly. “What we can tell from all the blood is that whatever happened here did not go as intended.”
Marcus crouched on the floor, reaching a hand to a blood spattering. “It’s dry. Between the color of the blood and the thin layer of dust on everything, I’m guessing the place was abandoned a few months ago.”
“A few months ago is when the attacks started,” Jack added.
“Hey, you guys, look at this.”
Jack and Marcus turned and headed over to Elizabeth, who stood staring at a huge pile of books.
What once had been a bookcase full of volumes of scientific research was now a splintered mass of paper and wood.
“Maybe your answers are in there?” Elizabeth pointed to the pile.
“Well,” Marcus said with as little enthusiasm as Jack ever heard in his voice. “There’s only one way to find out. Dig in.”
For the next few hours, the unlikely trio of explorers examined book after book. It seemed improbable to Jack that they would find anything. However, other than the condition of the room, the books were the only thing to go on.
Volume after volume was nothing more than textbooks or generic manuals on scientific studies, such as genetic engineering and human anatomy. Jack hated complaining, but he felt like he needed to voice his opinion as he tossed yet another book to the side.
“So what exactly are we looking for? We know this is a laboratory. They were obviously doing some kind of secret testing here.”
“A journal, some kind of record of their findings.” Marcus tossed another book to the side. “There should be something here to tell us what they were doing. Something to put all of these puzzle pieces together.”
“This is like looking for a needle in a haystack of needles,” Jack said.
“Wait! Look at this. Is this something?” Elizabeth lifted a book into the air.
The book she held in her hand was worn and brown. At first, Jack thought it was dirty, but as he got closer, he could see it too was covered in dried blood.
“Looks like a journal.” Elizabeth handed the book to Jack. “Or a diary if it was a girl. That’s funny, right? How, if it’s a boy’s book, it’s a journal, but if it belongs to a member of the opposite sex, it’s a diary. Why can’t they just have one word for both?”
“Fair point, Elizabeth.” Jack accepted the offered book. “Let’s see what’s inside.”
Marcus continued to rummage over the rest of the books while Jack flipped through the blood-crusted pages of the journal.
Jack couldn’t believe his eyes. It looked like a day-by-day account that a scientist made during his stay at the cave laboratory.
Jack flipped to the last page, which was almost entirely covered by dark, dried blood.
The entry’s date was covered by the bloodstain, but the few sentences that Jack could make out read:
Subject A21 has shown impressive resilience to the treatment.
The specimen is both larger than those before and has shown a level of aggression not noted in previous subjects.
However, we have been ordered to shut down the cave laboratory and head back to New Hope.
It seems like what little progress we have made has been too late.
Our plan is to exterminate any current test subjects in this facility.
Whatever our sister laboratory in New Hope has been working on must have been accomplished—that is the only way our assignment would be shut down.
This will be our last entry, as today we take A21 out of its holding container and…
That was it. The rest of the page was impossible to read. Jack was dumbfounded while at the same time shuffling to the front of the book to start from the beginning.
“Son, I think we found out who’s behind all of this.”
Jack looked up at his father, who held a particularly large glass beaker. His father turned it upside down and pointed to a small emblem nearly invisible to the naked eye.
Jack squinted then looked at his father, wide-eyed. Stamped into the glass was the same emblem found on the mage-powered bicycles, a small gear surrounding an “LI” in the shape of smokestacks, Dr. Oliver Livingston’s crest.