The Man Who Walked in Darkness (Miles Franco #2) (Miles Franco Urban Fantasy) (12 page)

But I could see one point where he was wrong. He’d made the same mistake as AISOR’s missing Tunneler; he’d assumed that the same Bore-derived Tunneling symbols could be used for traveling to other worlds. But to get a stable Tunnel to Limbus, you needed something that was both unnatural and animalistic. And to get to Tartarus…

I turned the paper over, fished a pen out of my pocket, and started doodling on the back. After a couple of tries, it came to me. An epiphany. A beam of sunlight hit me, followed by angels and a heavenly choir. I made for the elevators.

By the time I hit the basement, I’d sketched out my full design. Kowalski and Zhi were conferring over a computer screen, pointing and nodding. They didn’t notice me until I swept past them and called.

“Hey, guys. I got something.” I pointed at the symbols on the floor. “Get rid of that crap and get me something black to paint with. I’ve got a new Tunnel for you.”

It was a simple Tunnel to draw. Four circles arranged so they were all overlapping in the center, completely filled in with black paint except for the space I left empty where they overlapped. As soon as I put the finishing touches on it, I knew it was right. The discord was gone, and now it sang in my head perfectly in tune.

“Kemia,” I said. Someone shoved a bottle in my hand. I unscrewed it and started to pour. The fluid hit the edge of the painted image and immediately flowed toward the blank center, like the floor had turned into a giant funnel. The Tunnel swallowed it greedily, sucking it into the floor. Thought and emotion drained out along with it, but I felt stronger this time. Something purred in my head.

When the Tunnel opened, it swirled with kaleidoscope colors. Warmth bathed me.

Kowalski was the first to break his silence. “Get the team together,” he shouted. I heard scuffling movement behind me, but I was having trouble getting my eyes off the Tunnel. I didn’t want to wait. It pulled me like a swimming pool in the middle of a heat wave, and I wanted to do a cannonball into the middle of it.

“Mr. Franco.” Kowalski touched my shoulder, but I didn’t take my eyes off the Tunnel. “Do you think you can accompany the team to Tartarus? We need someone to maintain the Tunnel.”

“Show me where to sign.”

“Normally we’d brief you properly before we send you in,” he said. “The expeditions we’ve sent have reported Tartarus isn’t entirely safe. For now, all we want to do is take samples from some of the pools there. Miss Lu’s preliminary analysis has suggested the liquid may have some powerful properties. But we don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

“Sure,” I said. Christ, those colors were mesmerizing. “I’ll keep my eyes open.”

I caught a whiff of Zhi’s perfume on my other side. “That’s what we don’t want you to do,” she said. “See if these fit.”

She shoved something over my eyes and tightened a band around my head. The colors disappeared. I jerked like someone had stuck a knife in me. “What the hell? I can’t see a damn thing.”

“That’s the idea,” she said. If I squinted through the goggles, I could just make out her outline. It looked like a thin line of chalk on a blackboard.

“Tartarus is dangerous, Mr. Franco,” Kowalski said. “There are certain places that draw people in, both human and Vei. It’s a visual stimulus, almost hypnosis.”

“A visual siren song,” Zhi said. “In Greek mythology, the Sirens—”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Pretty women who sing to sailors and lure them to their deaths. Seems to be a lot of that going around lately.”

“What?” she said. I could hear the frown in her voice.

Kowalski interrupted before I could reply. “The goggles are designed to block the effects of Tartarus. It’s the only method we’ve discovered so far that works.”

“So we’re all going to be walking in the dark down there? Sounds like a great way to walk into a crevice. Are there crevices in Tartarus?”

“Many,” Zhi said.

“Brilliant.”

“You’re in charge of the Tunnel, Mr. Franco,” Kowalski said. “But once you’re in Tartarus, Sean Beekman, your team leader, will be giving the orders. For your own safety and that of everyone on the team, you’re to follow his instructions without hesitation. Is that going to be a problem?”

Yes.
“Not at all.”

“Good. We won’t sent in any rovers or heavy equipment until we’re sure this Tunnel of yours can take it. This will be a short expedition. An hour in Tartarus should be enough for today. Will your Tunnel take five people with packs and a small chemical analyzer?”

I let my mind probe the Tunnel. The desire to dive straight in had disappeared as soon as the goggles were on, and now I could give a more objective consideration of its strength. “Shouldn’t be a problem. It’s solid enough that it should stay up for at least thirty minutes even if I went for a coffee break right now.”

“Good,” he said. “Do you have anything you want to take with you?”

If I had a camera, I’d bring that. If there was some clue there to Claudia’s death, it might be good to get some photographic evidence. But poor saps like me have to make do. “I’ll take some spare Kemia and the clothes on my back.” I considered leaving my phone behind. If I was going to Heaven, electronics would be more likely to blow a chunk out of my pocket and any nearby flesh. But this didn’t seem like the sort of probability-twisting place that Heaven was, and something told me it wasn’t a smart idea to leave my stuff lying around this company building. “That’s it.”

“All right. I’ll have the team ready to leave in twenty minutes. Good work, Mr. Franco.”

“Yeah, it was, wasn’t it?”

Zhi and Kowalski scurried away to be busy somewhere else, leaving me alone at the Tunnel opening. I still hadn’t taken off the goggles, and I wasn’t sure it was a good idea to. Truth be told, I was scared half to hell by whatever had grabbed me by the balls before. And I was only getting the echo through the Tunnel. How powerful would that feeling be on the other side? I wasn’t so sure trusting my survival and my sanity to a pair of glorified sunglasses was the best idea. Still, I wasn’t exactly brimming with better ones, and there was no way I was going to back out on this now.

With my goggles on, the others in the team were just squiggly white outlines to me. Aside from Zhi and me, there were three others. The boss, Sean Beekman, was a solid, broad-shouldered guy about my height. By the sound of his voice, he’d given up on oxygen entirely and now only breathed cigarette smoke. The other two team members were a guy and a girl named Jamie and Jaimee, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell which one was which. The girl carried some sort of computer tablet, and the guy was carrying so much gear I could’ve mistaken him for a pack mule.

After a few moments chatting among themselves, Sean came up to me and shook my hand. “Good to meet you. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how excited we are about getting back to Tartarus. Do you want to tell everyone how you want the Tunnel run to go?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. I raised my voice to cut through the chatter of the scientists behind me. “Guys and girls, this is a brand new, never before seen on TV Tunnel here, so I don’t want anyone being a jackass. I’ll go first, and everyone stick close. If I tell you to run, ditch your gear and haul ass. I’ve been inside a Tunnel collapse before. You don’t want to be sitting around sucking your thumb. So keep your arms and legs inside the Tunnel at all times and don’t rock the damn boat.”

Everyone got their goggles in place, gathered their gear together, and stood in single file behind me at the Tunnel entrance. Zhi was right behind me, which was closer to me than I liked, but I couldn’t think of an excuse to get her to the back.

Kowalski came to see me off. “Make sure you get yourself and my people back, Mr. Franco.”

“Will do. Cross my heart.”

“You’re part of an incredible endeavor for science.”

“Science? I thought this was for AISOR.” I waved the team forward. “Let’s roll, everyone.”

TWELVE

Everyone kept their traps shut as they walked through the Tunnel, which suited me just fine. The Tunnel had a beautiful kind of humming about it that I’m pretty sure only I could hear, and it got louder with each step.

The end of the Tunnel approached quicker than I expected. Most journeys to Heaven take an hour or so, but I’d guess we were only walking fifteen or twenty minutes before the white dot at the end of the Tunnel became an opening. By now, the humming in my head was loud enough to drown out everyone’s footsteps. I called a halt, the first words spoken since just after we started making our way through the Tunnel.

“This is us,” I said. “Better get yourselves ready.”

Two of the figures rummaged around doing something with a large box on wheels they’d dragged behind them, while the other two approached me. I guessed by their outlines it was Zhi and Sean.

“Do you know what sort of terrain we’ll be coming out into?” Sean said in his chain-smoker rasp.

I shook my head. “Not a clue. Somewhere flat enough for a Tunnel exit to form, but there could be snake pits on every side for all I know.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll take point, and Zhi will be behind me. You follow her. If I say stop, everyone stops.”

“What if you fall to your death before you can say stop?” I asked.

“I’ll try to scream,” he said.

Good enough for me. Sean moved away to ready himself, and Zhi’s silhouette moved closer. She spoke so quietly I could barely hear her over the humming. “What’s up with you?” she asked. “Last night you were one person, and today you’re someone else entirely.”

Something in me wanted to tell her exactly what the hell I’d seen. I wanted to tell her all about Claudia, and I wanted to make her tell me what she knew. I wanted to say a big “Fuck you” to Mayor White, and the cops, and the Vei who’d split my ear open, and most of all, this damn girl who had the nerve to take me into her bed, screw me and then screw me over.

But I couldn’t blow this. So I settled for some good old-fashioned passive aggressiveness. “Just ’cause you spread your legs for me, doesn’t mean you get to psychoanalyze me. Don’t go getting full of yourself.”

She had good aim considering how little she could see. Her palm cracked against my bruised cheek and sent my head spinning on its axis. Jesus Christ, that stung.

By the time I got my head pointing the right way again, she’d stormed away and everyone else was looking at me. I gave a half-shrug and tried to gesture to Sean to get this show on the road. Somehow, even through the goggles, he worked it out. “All right, standard protocol everyone. Remember, we’ve only got an hour in Tartarus, so make it count. With me.”

He stepped up to the white surface that separated us from Tartarus. There was something nervous in the way he moved his shoulders. Zhi fell in behind him, not even looking at me. Without another word, Sean took a step forward, plunging through the surface. The Tunnel hummed happily in response. Zhi followed him a few seconds later, and the humming increased in pitch. No screams from the other side. That was promising. I rubbed my sore cheek, glanced back at Jamie and Jaimee, and stepped through the exit.

A chorus exploded in my head. My legs turned to cooked spaghetti and I only stopped myself face-planting into the rocky ground by sticking my hands out in front of me. But I wasn’t thinking about that. I was too busy listening to the music. Compared to what was going on in my head, every song Claudia or my band had ever played might as well have been the gurgling of a garbage disposal. Tartarus itself was cuddling me, warming me. I felt like a three-year-old getting tucked in by the mother I’d never known.

“Franco.” The voice was horrible, out of tune, a blight on the soundscape inside my head. Hands grabbed me and pulled me up. I realized I’d practically been stroking the ground.
Stop it,
I warned myself.
Don’t let the world do this to you. You’re doing this for Claudia, remember
. I shook my head and pressed the sound to the back of my mind.

“Franco,” Sean said again, his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”

I hoped the goggles kept him from seeing the blissful smile that wouldn’t come off my face. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine. I tripped.”

I could tell by the pressure of his hands he didn’t believe me, but one of the Jaimees came out of the Tunnel behind me and Sean had to go help with the equipment. No one was affected like me. The poor bastards couldn’t even hear the music.

With a strange sense of comfort still enveloping me, I looked around Tartarus for the first time. I was gripped with the desire to take off my goggles, but I kept my hands firmly in my pockets. From what I could tell, we were in some sort of huge underground cavern. I could see surfaces in every direction, with no sign of the sky. White outlines gleamed at me from a hundred surfaces. Every crack and corner of Tartaran rock was cast into sharp detail in my goggles, like an artist had sketched the place in white ink on black paper. My team, on the other hand, were shadowy figures, barely distinguishable.

I left the Tunnel open and started to wander. “Have you guys got lights on in here?” I said to whoever was listening. “I can see.”

“The walls give off their own light,” Sean said over his shoulder. “That’s one of the things we’re studying.”