Truth Engine - James Axler

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the whites of his eyes flashing red in the dim magma glow of the inset lights.

      Grant glanced back down the tunnel, saw the approaching forms of the three guards he had dispatched outside his cell. “Dammit, Edwards,” he said, turning back to his old colleague, “there’s no time for this shit. You have to trust me or we’ll both end up dead.”

      “Don’t you get it yet?” Edwards snarled in response, his leg kicking upward at Grant’s face. “Haven’t you figured out where you are?”

      Grant dropped low as Edwards’s foot brushed past his jaw, kicking out his own foot in a sweep designed to knock Edwards’s legs from under him. The blow struck hard, and Edwards sagged against the far wall of the tunnel, collapsing to his knees with a grunt of pain.

      “Why didn’t you tell me?” Grant growled at the ex-Mag, leaping toward Edwards’s toppling form, his fists bunched.

      “Look around you,” Edwards growled, indicating the rough walls and the flickering volcanic lights. “You’re in hell now, Grant. And you’re here to stay.”

      Grant stopped short, his fist poised to strike Edwards in his wickedly grinning mouth.

      The man took advantage of his momentary hesitation, driving his foot up across his foe’s jaw, knocking him backward. Grant cried out as he rolled away, tumbling across the rough tunnel floor beneath the glowing embers of the magma lights. His mind was racing, trying to piece together what Edwards had just told him. Could it possibly be true? Wasn’t hell just some crazy old myth, like all the others he and Kane and Brigid had exposed across the globe? Another primitive belief based on nothing more than ignorance and superstition?

      From behind, the three people Grant had come to think of as prison guards hurried toward his fallen form, their feet clattering on the hard floor. The lead figure was pointing at him, his finger jabbing the air.

      “Stop him!” he called.

      Standing over Grant’s sprawled form, Edwards smiled, his teeth glinting orange in the eerie glow of the volcanic lights. “Already ahead of you,” he assured the prison guards. “This little puke ain’t gonna cause us no more trouble.”

      “Sorry, Mojambo,” Grant snarled, “gonna have to rain on your parade here.” Then he leaped from the floor, driving himself at Edwards like a wound spring.

      Grant struck out with both fists, slamming one into the underside of the man’s jaw, even as the other pounded into his solar plexus. Edwards yelped with pain, toppling over into a fetal crouch. Behind him, the three hooded guards rushed forward, and Grant turned to face the newcomers.

      “Grab him,” one of the guards ordered, “quickly!”

      Instantly, Grant went on alert. He struck out blindly with his fist and caught the first of the men across the chest. He followed up with a low punch to his gut, striking with such force that the slender man doubled over, spitting gobs of blood as he tumbled to the floor.

      Then the second one was upon him, and Edwards had recovered also, pushing his muscular form off the rough rock floor. Grant spun, booting the first in the face in a roundhouse kick that left him facing the ex-Magistrate again, whom he identified as the more dangerous foe.

      As Grant turned, the third guard rushed at him, holding something in his bunched fist. Instinctively, Grant raised his left arm to block the blow, which had been intended for his skull. Flames of pain rushed through his forearm, and Grant screamed in agony, his voice high and strained.

      Then Edwards socked him in the jaw, even as Grant tried to block him. It was like being hit in the face by a hammer, such was the power behind Edwards’s punch.

      Grant staggered back, found himself stumbling against the rough tunnel wall, his ankles catching on one of those low ridges. Then the guard struck again, and Grant saw that he held a sliver of rock shaped like a blackjack, and was using it to strike out at his foe.

      The tunnel before Grant seemed to whirl, the elevator doors to spin, and his vision blurred as he was set upon by the two men. He kicked out blindly, and felt his toe connect with one of his attackers. The dark form fell backward, toppling over and slamming into one of the walls with a thud. But the other one struck Grant again, kicking at his chest and face, forcing his head back against the hard floor of the cavern.

      Grant was conscious of how the sounds around him changed, becoming distant as his skull struck the rock again. He reached out, trying to push his opponent away, but couldn’t seem to locate him through the miasma of his fuzzy vision. Then he felt another hammerlike punch, and his head snapped back once more.

      And as Grant sank into unconsciousness under the rain of blows, he heard Edwards laugh.

      “Welcome to hell, bitch,” his old colleague guffawed. “Enjoy your stay.”

      The rock walls…the glowing magma within them…it all seemed to make some perverse kind of sense in that instant. Grant couldn’t recall how he had come to be here, but maybe Edwards was right. Maybe he was trapped in hell. Maybe they all were.

      Chapter 7

      Brigid waited a long time in the empty cavern, tied to the chair with nothing but the mirror for company. She tried to remember what had happened after she and her companions had arrived at Cerberus via the mat-trans and engaged with the hooded intruders, but every time her mind thought back on it, she found herself distracted by something in the mirror, certain she could see someone stalking toward her from behind. When she looked more closely, she saw it was nothing, just the dark shadows of the cavern playing tricks in the faintly swirling magma lighting.

      And yet she could not relax. The mirror was like a ghost thing, an object sent to haunt her, to render her in a permanent state of anxiety. Perhaps that had been Ullikummis’s plan all along, to leave her with this simple torture, this way to seize her mind, her most powerful weapon.

      So she watched the mirror, studied her reflection. Her cheeks were dirty, scuffed with grime. There was a crescent-shaped bruise dominating the righthand side of the face in the mirror. She remembered now how the magnetic desk tidy had been thrown at her, smashing her so hard she had felt the ache in her teeth.

      But outside the ops room, it had been worse. There had been blood, washing down the walls and across the floor, a ghastly glistening sheet of crimson a half inch thick, enough to turn her stomach. She, Kane, Grant and Domi had stopped dead in their tracks, horrified by that sea of red swirling around their feet.

      The lighting of the tunnel-like main corridor had been strobing on and off, illuminating the high rock ceiling in a firework staccato, flashing against the steel girders that held the roof in place above them.

      Amid the pulsing lighting, Brigid had seen several figures lying motionless. She’d recognized Henny Johnson lying facedown in the pooling blood, her short dark bob matted against the side of her face. Automatically, Brigid had hurried over to the woman, her boots splashing in the wash of blood.

      “Henny?” she’d asked, rolling the woman’s head. “Henny, are you—?”

      She’d stopped. Henny’s eyes were open, but there was no acknowledgment on her blood-drenched face. Above her lifeless eyes, a wicked bruise showed across her pale forehead, and there was a clear indentation in her skull above her right eye. She was dead, struck by a stone.

      Gently, Brigid had closed Henny’s eyelids, giving the armorer what little dignity she could in her final rest.

      “Life spilled,” Domi had said, lifting one bare foot and looking at the blood oozing into the cracks and ridges between her toes. “Nasty shit.”

      “What happened to the power?” Brigid asked, glancing to Domi as she stepped away from Henny’s fallen form. Domi had been the only one of them on site when the attack had begun; she was their only hope now of piecing things together.

      “They attacked like locusts,” she explained. “Swarmed through the redoubt before we could respond. I watched on the monitors as they surged through the doors like

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