Doomsday Exam [BUREAU 13 Book Two] (11 page)

Trailing the pack, Ken got an odd reading that I never saw before, pure white. I had to check the chart on the nearby wall for that. Solid white meant that he was fanatically good and totally unmagical. Almost magic resistant. Weird.

Beyond the scanner, the floor appeared to be solid stone, but I knew better having been here before and having read the brochure. A closer examination showed the tip of a pair of pointed ears sticking from the surface of the quick-granite trap. Taking my Bureau issue pocketcomb, I tossed it forward. A maser beam flashed over the falling object, and the comb landed with a clatter on the hard flooring. Retrieving my comb, I waved the team onward. A key does not always resemble one, and vice versa.

"I do not understand,” Steve said, skirting around the wiggling ears. “Why isn't this place smashed to bits from the prisoners escaping?"

Watching the shadows in the corners, Patricia snorted. “The Facility is self-repairing. Heck, its damn near alive."

"What do you mean, almost?” Jessica asked softly, hugging herself.

Shivering slightly, Connie nodded in agreement. In passing, Raul pointed to a crack in the wall that was slowly closing even as we watched. Healing its own wounds. Very neat.

Ahead was a deceptively plain corridor; concrete floor, metal walls, acoustical tiles ceiling. George stayed to the left, I hugged the right. In actuality, this passage was three hallways combined into a one. I could only assume it worked by mixing technology and magic, or maybe it was all done with smoke and mirrors, I really had no idea. Walking along the corridor, escorted prisoners went to Holding. Strolling along the exact same hallway, Tech Serve scientists arrived at Research, while security officers reached Storage, authorized field agents could go anywhere, and everybody else was dumped into the furnace at the center of the Earth.

Research was where the Bureau scientists experimented on ways to kill the unkillables. Finding the specific material weakness of a supernatural being was an often painstaking, infuriating and pretty grisly business. Most monsters received damage from wood or silver, but some could only be slain by specific holy relics, a unique word, ritual, disease, reruns of M*A*S*H played backwards, true love, or even old age. Understandably, the frenzied scientists had a private bar and toll-free hot line for 24 hour a day psychiatric counseling.

Storage was where we kept artifacts too dangerous to leave lying around the world, but that we still wanted to have handy in case of an emergency. Some were damned, some alien, and a few were so incredibly holy that only a truly innocent person of the purest spirit could even go near them without being destroyed. Destroyed. That was the term we taught the cadets, because there really was no earthly equivalent of what happened. You could go insane just by watching. It was worse than professional wrestling.

His Thompson balanced in both hands, Ken gave a tactful cough.

"What?” I whispered.

"If the doors are so difficult to gain exit, and the boojums can chew their way through stone and superhard ice, why didn't they just tunnel out the sides of the Facility instead of dashing into the town where we waited with amassed weapons?"

Sounded like a run-on sentence, but also a good question. Jessica gave the answer. Set in kilometers of concrete merely to keep it steady, the outer walls and bottom of the Facility were a transdimensional energy shield; a solidified version of a forcefield, prismatic dome and psionic death barrier combined. It was absolutely indestructible. End of discussion. Thermonuclear bombs could not even scratch the surface. A space warping gravitational pull of a neutron star would have no effect. A supernova didn't have enough umph to warm a square centimeter.

Sadly, the Bureau could not take the credit for making this bit of superscience, and if the barrier got damaged we could not fix it, because no human had built the object. If the truth be told, we stole The Cup. It was the first assignment I was ever on, and brother, it was almost my last.

With impenetrable sides and bottom, the only way in or out of the Facility was the top, and that we could take credit for. At the end of the corridor was the main exit, an odd tunnel that resembled an inverted porcupine and rolled into a tube. But instead of quills, this tunnel was packed with weapons: machine guns, chainsaws, spears, lances, swords, flamethrowers, bazookas, frost wands, laser cannons, microwave beamers, poison gas jets, acid squirters, crossbows, vibro-swords, blowguns, lightning rods and so on, and so forth. Except for a two-foot wide strip of floor down the middle, every inch of the tunnel bristled with deathdealers.

Personally, I hadn't been able to fathom how the prisoners got past this mother of a gate, but a single glance told the answer. The tunnel was deactivated, the weapons hung limply from the curved wall, dangling and clanging like a jungle of dead metal wind chimes. Mindful of the sharp edges, George and I eased into the curtain of jingling weapons. George was a bit pale, but resolute. He hated tunnels of any sort after a nasty experience in Viet Nam as a teenager.

Using the tip of her staff, Katrina carefully prodded a barbed javelin. The weapon shattered like Depression glass. “Czar's blood,” she whispered. “What could done this?"

Interesting, I was noticing that her accent got thicker the more excited she was. An important tip to remember for future poker sessions.

"Must have been an EMP bomb,” George stated, walking in a smooth line, one boot placed exactly in front of the other as if traveling through a minefield.

Ducking his head, Steve brushed a nest of drooping machine guns out of his way. “A what kind of bomb?"

"An electro-magnetic pulse bomb,” George explained, watching everywhere for danger. “A tesla coil accumulator emits a spit charge to generate a split second full spectrum, magnetic field that fries transistors and computer chips."

"And that is bad,” said Ken as a question.

After a pause, George politely agreed. Yes, that was very bad and very high tech. Any electronic equipment controlled by microprocessors or transistors would be rendered useless. But an EM pulse would have no effect on the magical defensives, and the Facility used both.

I snorted in annoyance. EMP bombs were merely the latest toy of humanity. It seemed to me that the higher the technology, the easier it was to destroy. The only real way to stop a good, old-fashioned, steam locomotive was to drop it off a cliff. Preferably to land on top of another steam locomotive.

Flinching and dodging, Jessica tried to avoid the hanging ironmongery of doom. “These have been used,” she stated, stooping under a faintly humming vibro-sword. “And more than once."

"There have been escapes before,” I admitted honestly.

"But nothing on the scale of today."

"Never."

Parting the last of the impotent armaments with our gun barrels, George and I stepped out of the tunnel, moving out of the way of the folks behind in case we needed some combat room. But there was only darkness, deep and silent. Not a sound could be heard, even our own breath seemed to be hushed.

I don't like this
, Jessica sent.

"Me either. Infra-red,” I ordered, touching a switch on my helmet.

Illumination returned to my visor, and I could see that my team was standing on a small ledge that jutted from the ebony wall like the hand of a starving beggar. To our left was a sloped walkway that flowed along the curving wall, going down and out of sight into the stygian depths. A pipe railing alongside the walkway offered meager protection from tumbling off the abrupt edge into the nothingness.

Careful of my balance, I glanced over the railing. Total blackness stretching into infinity. Vertigo seized me for a moment as ghostly echoes drifted upward, distant pinpoints of light flickered in the great abyss resembling dying stars. In actuality, they must have been fires lit by the prisoners to try and see their way to the exit. Torches made from bed linen, perhaps burning hair, or each other.

"How deep is it?” Ken asked, sounding impressed. There was no echo of his words, the distance consumed the words and gave nothing back.

"It bottomless,” Mindy said, lowering the rainbow effect of her sword with a twist of the pommel.

"Factual or poetic?"

Sanders sure had an odd way of talking. “Literal,” I replied.

"Then what does it rest on?” Steve asked puzzled.

"The exterior is buttressed on a bed of ferro-concrete only a few miles away, but the inside goes on forever without a bottom."

Dimming her own wand, Katrina frowned. “How is that possible?"

"You tell us and win a million dollars from Horace Gordon and the eternal gratitude of TechServ,” I said.

Glancing upward, I could dimly see an octopus in medieval armor hanging suspended from the ceiling. Each of its limbs were supposed to be holding a magic wand with a different property. No wands were in sight, and I had a feeling that the armor was empty. So long Lou, best of luck in the afterlife.

"
Hai!
” Mindy cried falling on her butt, both hands slapping the floor as she hit.

The students rushed over to assist the shaken martial artist back to her feet, while the rest of us could only stare in dumbfoundment. Mindy Jennings fell down?

Keeping a hand gripped tight on the railing, Mindy eased her sneaker onto the sloped walkway and pushed it about. There was no squeaky sound of rubber on wax.

"Frictionless surface,” Mindy declared, retreating to a safe distance. “If I hadn't been able to throw myself backwards, I would be sliding my way to the bottom of the Facility."

Hesitantly going close, Patricia spit on the walkway and it slid away without a trace. “At about a zillion miles per hour,” she added as a guess.

Swell. I hadn't encountered anything like this before. The stairs had been in place last time I visited.

"Find the controls to extend the stairs,” I said, shouldering my weapon. “George, Sanders and the twins on guard."

We spent a precious two minutes on a fruitless search of the ledge. If the controls were here and not secreted somewhere else entirely, there were hidden beyond our ability to find them. Linking our belts together, we wasted another minute doing a comedy routine of drunks on ice as the team attempted to walk down the frictionless surface. Even the railing was made of the same slippery stuff. Lose your grip for a split tick and whoosh!

Gathering the mages in a huddle, Raul held a fast conference with Steve and Katrina.

"SOSF?” Steve offered hesitantly.

"Seems the best way,” Sommers noted.

"I'll do it,” Raul announced. “You two watch and learn."

Katrina bowed. “We obey, Obi Wan."

"Smart ass,” George said as a compliment.

Gesturing and chanting, Raul tapped each of our shoes with his silver staff and the footwear now clung to the ground as if it was flat and level. Laughing in delight, Mindy even ran up the wall to stand perpendicular to us.

"Shoes of Sure Footing,” Raul explained, as we hurried along the walkway. “Its such an ancient conjure I nearly forgot the words."

"What was SOSF originally used for?” Patricia asked, lifting and placing each foot with exaggerated care. “Mountain climbers? Or was it for sailors at sea to stay on deck during a storm?"

"Thieves."

"Ah."

Passing an alcove set into the black wall above us, I noticed a security camera sitting motionless. How had that happened? Even with the electronics dead, there still should have been battery power, and there was clearly no external damage. Strange.

Glancing about for any other cameras, I noticed a barely discernable square of pure ebony coming our way from the darkness overhead. Bloody hell, a flapjack!

"Incoming!” I shouted over the chatter of my machine pistol, the spent brass shells hitting the walkway to instantly slide away with out a noise. “Twelve o'clock high!"

"Roman Candle!” George ordered, his M60 spitting lead upward.

In rough unison, everybody cut loose with their weapons; beams, Fire Lances, arrows and bullets impacted into the deadly flying chameleon, the muzzle flashes strobing the dark in a wild disco effect. The sheer physical mass of our weaponry held the beastie at bay until Katrina shouted a spell.

Instantly, the flapjack shot down the central shaft of the Facility, disappearing into the blackness as it was hot for a date with the sexiest lady flapjack who ever lived.

"What did you do?” Steve asked, staring over the railing.

Patting the Russian on the shapely shoulder, Raul chuckled, “She used a Fly spell."

"But it was flying."

"Now it flies for me,” Katrina answered proudly. “At thirty two feet, per second per second, compounded by the maximum velocity of the species. When spell wears off, animal will be too far away to annoy again. Unless we are lucky and it hits something hard on way down."

I was starting to like this gal. She fought mean.

Unfortunately, our gunshots seemed to have attracted the attention of the other denizens of the Facility. Distant growls and slobbers did not sound so distant anymore, and some of those burning stars were coming up the walkway in a steady line.

"Double time, hush,” I whispered, screwing a magical silencer onto my .357 Magnum revolver. “Use silenced weapons only. Harch!"

In tight order, we moved down the walkway and soon began to encounter side corridors. Let me see, we're in section 3, so we wanted level 17, corridor 5, number 12.

The torches from below were uncomfortably close, the growls nearly understandable words and we were running when I finally reached the correct corridor. Silently, I pointed inside and my team rushed off the ramp. Raul paused until everybody else was inside, then sprayed the mouth of the corridor with a smoky discharge from his staff. The end of the corridor closed solid just as the sounds of the prisoners arrived, then proceed onward. Whew, close one.

Yowsa
, Connie sent telepathically.

Moving deeper into the corridor, the passage way lined with the doors to cells. Some had broken hinges, others were ruptured in the middle, and a few were completely missing.