Truth Engine - James Axler

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then he was upon Grant again, his left arm swinging through the air with phenomenal speed. Grant batted the punch aside, taking a step back as he did so. The man’s first attack may have been of poor quality, but he seemed to be getting into it now—deflecting that second punch had felt like batting aside an iron bar. Furthermore, Grant wanted to finish this quickly before the noise of the scuffle attracted any further attention.

      His opponent was hindered by the broken wrist, and his right hand flopped at an uncomfortable angle as he struggled. Still, he seemed incredibly powerful and single-minded in his attack now, fighting more like a machine than a wounded man. Grant ducked, avoiding the arc of the next swinging punch, and drove his hand up and forward, connecting with the man’s jaw with a ram’s-head blow. The guard’s teeth clamped shut with a horrible clack and he staggered back a half step. Grant was already following through, thrusting his left knee into his solar plexus with such swiftness that the man folded in two like a snapped twig. Grant stepped back as his opponent smacked into the wall behind him, then keeled over, a wave of disorientation obviously overwhelming him.

      Grant moved swiftly, dismissing his struggling foe as he hurried down the tunnel, leaping over the other one, who was still recovering from being thrown against the ceiling. Boots striking against the hard stone, Grant rushed past the glowing pods of light winking eerily within the wall cavities.

      As he ran toward the junction in the tunnel, confused thoughts rattled his mind. Who were these people and how had they trapped him—an ex-Magistrate, of all people? His memory of how he had come to be here was blurry at best, but the torn shadow suit and the evidence of his being stripped of his weapons suggested that he had come here as part of a Cerberus field mission.

      He struggled to remember how it had happened. Had he been with Kane? With Brigid? His memory was a closed book to him just now; he couldn’t seem to pinpoint anything at all.

      Grant was an ex-Magistrate, trained in the arts of combat. His captors, though fast, appeared to be normal enough. He should not find himself like this, trapped in a cell, with no memory of how he had come to be here. It seemed ludicrous.

      At the end of the tunnel, he found himself with two options, left or right. He looked back and forth for just a moment, trying to discern any difference between the choices presented to him. Bland rock walls ill-lit by magma lamps on either side—no choice to speak of.

      He was trapped like a rat in a maze, he realized, with no idea which way to turn.

      He glanced behind him, saw his foes rolling on the floor. Then he made a decision on instinct, turning right and hurrying down the tunnel, while keeping his movements as quiet as he could. He needed to put as much space as possible between himself and the three people he’d left outside his featureless cell, and the more turns he took, the more difficult he would be to track down.

      Right, then left, then another right, keeping up a zigzag pattern, boots slapping against the floor of the empty tunnels carved from rock. An open doorway led him to a stone stairwell, eerily lit by the same magma pods.

      Here and there, Grant found low walls, some barely reaching to his knee, and he leaped over these, wondering at their purpose. It seemed that the labyrinthine cavern was a natural feature, adapted for use as a prison block, yet the shifting walls gave him the distinct impression there was more to it than that.

      Grant ran on, frequently peering over his shoulder to check that he wasn’t being pursued. Turning a corner, he found himself in a wider tunnel, its ceiling stretching approximately twenty feet above him. He peered up into the gloom, seeing the stalactites that lined the ceiling, scarcely visible in the dull glow of the magma pods lining the walls at irregular intervals. This tunnel stretched a long way, and Grant saw two of the now-familiar hooded figures moving toward him, some distance away. He pulled back, pressing his flank to the wall of the tunnel he had emerged from.

      The hooded figures walked toward him, talking in low mumbles. Hidden in the gloomy shadows, Grant prepared himself, bunching his hands into fists. It was hard to think clearly for some reason; he felt as though he was recovering from a hangover. Was it the lack of food, perhaps? Or was something else affecting him here?

      Grant was about to pounce upon the robed figures when they turned off the main tunnel, into a side corridor in the opposite wall. The entrance was almost hidden in shadow, the lighting here was so poor.

      Grant reached over, tapping his finger against the nearest glowing orb of magma. Close up, it seemed to flicker, as if it were alive. The light became brighter for a moment as the lava within the pod was drawn to his hand, then it ebbed back to its dull glow as he moved away.

      “Weird,” he muttered.

      Carefully, Grant made his way out into the main tunnel once more, looking all around him. Jutting rock walls were place here and there like hurdles on a race course, low to the stone floor. At one end, perhaps a dozen paces from where he now stood, there was an open archway, the low rocks overhanging in a jagged pattern. From beyond that arch, the eerie orange glow of lava seemed brighter.

      With as much stealth as he could muster in his tired body, Grant padded toward the archway. Edging up to it, he put one hand on the wall there and peered at the scene beyond.

      Beyond the opening was a large cave, where several more of the hooded figures were moving about. Waist-high ridges of rock cut across the space in two curved lines, with breaks in them here and there. Grant’s attention was drawn to something over in the far left corner of the room. Lightning bolts seemed to flash there, behind a screen of misted glass, and he recognized with a start that it was a mat-trans unit, with fingers of rough stone cladding branching across the armaglass like a creeping vine.

      “Where the hell am I?” Grant muttered.

      A mat-trans, he thought, turning the fact over in his head. If these people had a mat-trans, then here was a chance for him to escape, to bring help. If he could access that device, he could return to Cerberus and bring his allies to shut down this hellhole. Or he could take a quantum jump to New Edo, call upon his lover, Shizuka, and her fearsome Tigers of Heaven, to back him up as he closed down this perverse prison. He wouldn’t need to program in the correct coordinates for the mat-trans unit—he could take a random leap, then recover at that destination, once he was out of the vipers’ nest. But to access that unit in the first place would mean somehow crossing this room without getting caught. He could wait it out, maybe, skulk in the shadows until such time as an opportunity arose. The prison guards were all dressed in shapeless hooded robes, and if Grant could snag one of these, he could likely pass unchallenged for a short while at least, until word of his escape from his cell became widespread. Or he could fight it out now, take on the eight figures in this cavern, but in his hungry, weakened state that could be suicidal.

      In the far corner of the cave, the crackling lightning ceased and the mist inside the mat-trans unit began to dissipate. Another robed figure appeared within it, and Grant watched with interest as the figure stepped forward through the opening door, greeting others in the room with friendly authority.

      Grant stepped back from the archway as the new arrival turned in his direction and began walking toward him, with two of his similarly dressed companions in tow. Dammit, they’re coming out here, he thought.

      The ex-Magistrate turned, heading for the access tunnel he had recently used, only to spot the three figures he had left by his open cell.

      He turned back, looking across at the far side of the tunnel, to a branching corridor where the other figures were disappearing. A moment later, he ran through that doorway and found himself in another rock-walled tunnel. This one ended in a sharp turn, and Grant heard something from the far end as he rushed along it. Pulling up short, he leaned against the wall and peered around the corner. A bank of elevator doors was embedded in the rock. The glistening steel was at odds with the cavernous tunnel, reflecting the glowing pods of magma like fire.

      Grant peered behind him for a moment, checking that he wasn’t being followed, before he turned back to examine the situation.

      As he stood there, the farthest set of elevator doors slid open and a familiar figure stepped out.

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