Kody, already in the driver’s seat, engaged the gears, stepped on the gas pedal and took off after Jag. “What is he
doing?
Trying to get himself killed?”
“No,” Mariah choked. “He’s leading them away from us.”
A
ari looked up warily when he heard the door to the room open. To his astonishment, he saw Marshall come through the door backward, dragging an unconscious guard. The teenagers scrambled to their feet so quickly that both their chairs toppled over. “Marshall!”
Marshall winked at them before stepping back out the door. “Hey, kiddos.”
“About time you showed up,” Tegan said with mock gruffness.
The Sentry entered again, dragging a second unconscious guard. “Nice to see you too, sheesh.” He placed the guards in a corner of the room and brought out his switchblade to cut the teens loose from their bindings. Aari and Tegan gave him a quick hug. Though Marshall seemed surprised, he hugged them back and smiled. “You two alright?”
“Yeah,” Tegan said. “I guess you got in without a hitch?”
“You guessed right. There’s a camera just outside the elevator pointed along the passageway. I took it out, so that hallway is safe.”
“How’d you take it out?” Aari asked.
“I climbed through the ceiling panel, found the cable and cut it. But that’s only one camera down; there are others that are still functioning. It won’t be long before the guards come to investigate, so we don’t have much time.” He opened his bag. “I trust that you’re familiar with these?”
Snug inside the bag were several green cubes and pyramid-shaped gels. With eyes wide, Aari stuttered, “Aren’t these—the explosives from Dema-Ki?”
“The pyramid ones, they’re incendiary, right?” Tegan asked. “I remember Mariah telling me about them.”
“Yes,” Marshall said. “The cubes contain high explosives but the pyramid ones will erupt in an intense flame and incinerate any object they’re placed on, even the toughest metals.”
“How did you get your hands on these?”
“All Sentries receive knowledge and skills from Dema-Ki that are essential for us to carry out our duties. That includes producing things we need from available materials.” He zipped up the bag. “There’s a room right across from the elevator where they’ve stored the pods and the unactivated nanomites ready to be shipped out. I’ll load them into the truck. I’ll probably have to make a few trips. In the meantime, could I task you guys to rig this place up?” He held out the bag.
Aari took it and passed it to Tegan. “Leave it to us. I can cover Tegan so the cameras don’t spot her.”
Tegan slung the bag over her shoulders. “Oh, okay, so I’ll be the one walking around with the explosives, then.”
“You know the place better than I do
and
where the cameras are. You’ll know the best places to plant these.”
“True.”
“Thanks,” Marshall said as he smoothed his shirt. “Before you go . . . You’ll see three indents on one side of the explosives.”
“Those are timers,” Aari recalled. “Longest one is set for two hours, that’s all I know.”
“Yes, that would be the third one. Avoid the first one, it will leave you with mere seconds. Use the middle setting. That will set the explosives to go off in half an hour. That should give us enough time to rig the whole place up and get out.”
“Got it,” Tegan said, then dragged Aari out of the room. “Come on, Brainiac, we’ve got work to do.”
Marshall followed them out and shut the door, then tossed Tegan a multi-tool wrench. “Good luck, you two. Try not to take out any more cameras unless it’s absolutely necessary. We don’t want to alert the guards more than I already have.”
The friends nodded at him as the Sentry directed his dolly into the room opposite the elevator. Tegan twirled the tool around her index finger. “Cover me.”
Aari fixed his attention on his friend. After a few seconds of shimmering, she disappeared. “You’re good to go,” he said. “If you take a few steps down the hallway, you’ll see a corridor to your right. There may be a camera there.”
Tegan’s disembodied voice sighed. “I’m invisible, Aari, not blind.”
“I forgot. Sorry.”
“It’s fine . . . You’re right, by the way. There is a camera. There’s no way you’ll get through without being seen. I’ll have to take it out but I think I can make it look like a routine malfunction.”
Aari lay on the ground and peered around the corner so he could continue bending the light around Tegan while minimizing the risk of detection. It didn’t take long before the camera was hanging loosely from its mount with the lens pointing downward.
“I don’t think that looks like a routine malfunction,” Aari hissed.
“From their end, it will,” she responded haughtily.
Once she’d returned, they continued down the main hallway. They passed a room to their left, which Tegan didn’t bother to check.
Sensing his impending question, she said, “That was the room where they held me. Nothing to blow up in there.” She opened a door on the right. “What do we have here? Ah, right. It’s where the nanomites are tested before being packed and transferred to the storage area.”
We’re in the belly of the beast.
The notion sent a cold and unpleasant tingle through Aari’s body.
The world is being brought to its knees and this is where the scourge begins.
Not impeded by such thoughts, Tegan continued, focused as she was on the task at hand. “Right, so . . . ”
“What do you see?”
“It’s mostly long lab tables and shelves in here, but there are three steel barrels at the far end of the room.”
“What’s in them?”
“If I really had to guess, having seen them with the dragonfly, some chemical used in the final stages of producing the nanomites. Speaking of which, that critter’s still around here somewhere.”
“You just left it in here?”
“I forgot to guide it back out.”
“Okay, well, that’s not a big worry right now. Use the incendiary gels on the barrels, Teegs.”
“My thoughts exactly.” As she ran over to the barrels and positioned the gels, she asked, “I’ve been wondering, Aari. When you bend light away from something, you can’t see it, but somehow you never lose track of where it is. How?”
Aari mulled over the question; it wasn’t something he’d ever thought about before. “I’m not too sure, but you could say it’s just like having a sixth sense. Once I’ve covered an object—or person—I can feel where it’s located at any given moment.”
“Interesting. Alright, I’ve planted a couple of cubes around the room as well.”
“I can see them. We’re good here?”
“We’re good.”
They jogged down the main hallway, hearing the elevator open as Marshall returned from loading the truck. Ahead, they came upon a second corridor and continued until they noticed a long rectangular room with a half-glass wall to their right.
Tegan observed the inside. “I remember this room. I thought it looked awfully familiar when I first saw it.”
“That’s probably because it’s like one of the rooms at Josh’s facility in Goleta,” Aari said.
“That’s it! It’s where they cut these thin sheets from a circular block . . . ”
“Wafers,” he said instantly. “That’s the first process in creating the nanomites. We’ll definitely need to plant explosives here.”
“There are cameras in there. They’ll see the door open by itself.”
“You’ll make them believe in ghosts, then. Go on, Teegs.”
Tegan opened the door and ran in, quickly placing the green cubes out of the camera’s direct view, then ran back out. She hurried down the third corridor, leaving Aari to crawl in her wake to avoid detection by the cameras inside the wafer production room. They passed by a conference room but opted not to rig it.
Tegan came to a halt. “Everything here is set. Two more rooms to take care of and we can skedaddle.”
Aari ceased bending the light around Tegan and she appeared ahead of him, bouncing on her toes. At the end of the corridor they noticed a conveyor belt that ran between two rooms on either side of the passageway. Through the large glass windows of the room on their right, they observed a stainless steel sphere that took up most of the space in the chamber. The conveyor belt ran through the sphere and continued to an adjacent room.
Aari read the stenciled markings on the glass. “REAPR Fortifier . . . What in the—!” He pulled Tegan down so they were crouched under the window. “There’s a camera in that room pointed our way! I think we’ve been spotted!”
Tegan reached into the bag and pulled out a pyramid-shaped incendiary. “Then we need to make quick work of this.”
Aari stopped her before she could move. “Why has it been so quiet?”
“Huh?”
“I haven’t heard the elevator in a while. Marshall should be using it to make his trips to load up the truck.”
Just as he finished his sentence, they heard the hum of the elevator’s descent followed by the clanking of its metal door opening. Tegan gave Aari a hard enough knock on the arm. “There, see? He’s here. Don’t scare me like that!”
A deep, sinister growl rolled toward them like a menacing wave intent on submerging the terrified pair. It was an all too familiar and a very unwelcome sound to the friends.
“Cover me,” Tegan requested quietly. “I want to see what it is.”
Aari, bewildered, wavered, then complied and walked behind her as he silently screamed,
I don’t think we need to confirm what kind of creature makes a noise like that!
He pressed against the corner of the wall before he felt Tegan grab his arm and heard her breathe, “There’s a Marauder sniffing around. A guard in black uniform is controlling it—God, that’s a long scar on his face—and they’re blocking our only exit out of here.”
Aari brought Tegan back to visibility. “We have to get around them somehow.”
A roar suddenly filled the entire lab, sending tremors through the floor and morphing into shivers up Aari’s spine. The guard spoke up. “I know you’re in here, kids. We’ve captured the man who helped you out. Turn yourselves in now and I won’t let this beast loose.”
“Not happening,” Tegan hissed so only Aari could hear. She scanned around, then reached out to open the nearest door. Scampering in, the friends found themselves in the conference room they’d passed by earlier. There was no other way out but Aari reckoned that if they could climb up and fit through the ceiling panels, they might be able to hide. They quickly got onto the table and Aari jumped up, knocking a panel loose and pulling himself up into the opening in the ceiling.
“Not this again!” Tegan moaned.
Aari extended his hands down from the ceiling. “Hurry! The beast is gonna pick up our trail!”
Tegan raised her arms above her head and Aari gripped her hands. As he started pulling her up, she shrieked. “It’s seen me! It’s staring through the window!”
The glass beside the table shattered as the Marauder crashed through it with ease. Without meaning to, Tegan let go of Aari and, in her fright, stumbled backward and fell off the table. The muscular black beast leapt onto the tabletop, taking her place, and stared the girl down. Drool dripped from behind its bared fangs. Its dark yellow eyes burned with malevolence.
Aari felt the framework that supported the ceiling panels begin to warp from his weight. He looked above to find something to grab on to but it was too late. The entire frame started to give. An instant later it came down, bringing Aari with it. Ceiling panels and the not-so-intrepid teen crashed onto the Marauder, momentarily knocking it off balance.
Aari rolled off the table instinctively and got to his feet, pulling Tegan up. They ran out of the room, leaving the stunned beast to recover. They turned down the hallway toward the elevator but when they saw the beefy guard eyeballing them from down the corridor, spun around and darted into a room across from the one they’d been in. It was lit in dim amber light that gave it a surreal atmosphere. Large glass beakers lined shelves that spanned the walls.
They raced for a door at the other end of the room. Aari turned the knob but the door remained stuck. “It won’t open!” he vented. “It won’t bloody open!”
Tegan jiggled the doorknob violently but got no better result. They turned back toward the door they’d come through and saw the ghastly shape of the Marauder silhouetted in the doorway. Its ears were erect and the mane-like fur on the back of its neck and shoulders bristled.
This thing looks different from the ones on the mountain
, Aari thought as he looked around for something to use as a weapon.
Why isn’t there anything here?!
The Marauder skulked through the open door a few steps then rocketed toward them, its long legs extending with each stride. In desperation, Aari grabbed a beaker off the shelf beside him. As the Marauder crouched to make its final leap toward the friends, he flung the viscous content onto the floor in front of the creature. The beast’s paws slid out from under it as it lost traction and it fell, smashing its jaw to the ground.
Aari and Tegan wasted no time running past the Marauder. As they did, the beast managed to get partial grip with its hind legs and lashed out. The long claws on its forepaws caught Aari, tearing the back of his shirt and leaving two lengthy crimson lacerations on his skin. Aari bellowed as white-hot pain seared up his body. He staggered but Tegan rushed to hold him upright and helped him out into the hallway. They saw the guard still blocking the elevator; he laughed in wicked delight but didn’t make a move.
He’s letting that thing play cat and mouse with us! He’s sick!
In spite of the stinging pain, Aari retained the presence of mind to pull Tegan back down the third passageway toward the REAPR Fortifier chamber.
“Why are we coming back here?” Tegan demanded as they ran into the room.
Aari located a large hatch in the spherical structure and tugged at it. “Because I think I have an idea how we can get rid of that monster, but we gotta be quick. Give me a hand!”
Moments later the Marauder prowled into the room with its nose to the ground. It lifted its massive head to the open hatch and caught sight of Aari inside the sphere. Letting out another ear-splitting roar, it prepared to leap at the boy but stopped at the last moment. It turned away from Aari and sniffed the air right in front of it.