LITMIR.BIZ

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Brigid finished. “A stone knife with writing down both sides that promises the death of godly enemies. Satisfied?”

      Kane raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Pretty specific, Baptiste,” he said. And then, after a moment’s thought, he asked, “How much inside knowledge you got?”

      “Me?” Brigid replied, offended.

      “Come on, spill,” Kane insisted.

      “If you’d bothered to read Lakesh’s notes, you’d have seen…” Brigid began.

      “Notes?” Grant spit. “Did you see how thick that report was? The file was like the Prophesies of Whathisnamus.”

      “Nostradamus,” Brigid corrected automatically.

      As they spoke, Kane swept snow aside and pulled back a hunk of glistening metal from the ground. The edges were a little jagged, but it had the rudimentary appearance of a door into the snow. “Okay, kids,” he announced, “we’re in.”

      Seconds later, Kane clipped a powerful xenon flashlight to his jacket’s lapel and clambered through the door, his two partners following him.

      Making their way through the makeshift doorway, the three Cerberus exiles found themselves standing on a ledge about seven inches across. Leading the way, Kane walked along the ledge, kicking several small objects aside that appeared to be nothing more than paperweights.

      Together, they made their way along the ledge until they could jump down to what appeared to be a series of steps running along the towering walls of a vast chamber. They found themselves in a high-ceilinged area that reminded Brigid of a chapel. Remarkably, Kane’s flashlight beam was redundant; the area appeared to be lit through some hidden process that granted the ceiling a soft, pleasant glow. The glow was more than enough to light the room, and it almost seemed to be natural light, rather than artificial.

      The chamber stretched on for almost eighty feet, with a width of half that again. The high ceiling gave it the air of a cathedral, and Brigid found herself looking up in wonder at the enormity of the place. The ledge that they had initially dropped onto had led to a series of shelves that doubled as steps. The shelves stretched all the way up all four walls, with a few items placed sparsely along their lengths. Everything was the color of ice, white and blue and crystal clear.

      As they peered all around them, the three explorers saw twin rows of glass cabinets spaced widely apart in two perfectly straight lines that led to the exit doorway. Each of the cabinets held a mismatched item of some description, and Brigid found herself drawn to the one nearest to where they had climbed down the shelves. Inside, she saw an old-fashioned barrel organ, finished in lustrous mahogany with a large wheel at each of the four corners of its base. She leaned closer, peering at the strange item until her forehead brushed against the cool glass of its containment box.

      “So,” Kane asked, “what is all this?”

      Brigid turned away from the cabinet. “Storeroom?” she proposed with some uncertainty.

      “You said this place had become buried,” Grant said, “which means we’re at the top of the building. Meaning it’s an attic full of junk. Nothing unusual about that.”

      Kane glanced around him, checking several of the cabinets. The nearest held an empty wooden chair, and in the one beside it a single bullet rested on a plinth. “Trophy room maybe,” he suggested. “Where old man Flag kept his treasures.”

      “I wonder what they all mean,” Brigid said, her quiet voice echoing through the vastness of the chamber as they made their way toward a doorway at the far end of the room.

      Kane gestured to the large wooden throne that stood inside the nearby cabinet, indicating the strange ideographs that decorated its surface. “Looks like Egyptian writing,” he said.

      Brigid glanced at it for a second. “Aztec,” she corrected him.

      Trailing behind them, Grant cast his eyes across all the curiosities in the vast room. “So, what was this Flag guy?” he rumbled, his voice echoing in the room. “Some kind of collector of junk?”

      “He was an adventurer, like us,” Brigid explained, leading them past the cabinet with the bullet inside, checking her portable scanner with a furrowed brow.

      They stepped out of the room of curiosities and found themselves on a balcony containing an old-fashioned radio receiver. The balcony overlooked a huge area that stretched farther than they could readily make out. The area contained two desks and several comfortable seats, but the vast majority of it was dedicated to what appeared to be a scientific laboratory. The lab was stocked to an almost obsessive degree, featuring equipment whose nature Kane couldn’t even begin to guess. Above and to the sides, the walls and ceiling appeared to be made of pure ice, twinkling in place as the light played over its smooth surface.

      “This is nothing like the schematics,” Brigid said as she consulted the palm-size tracker screen.

      “Schematics can be wrong,” Kane reminded her with a shrug, his eyes still fixed on the level below them.

      “Not these,” Brigid told him, tapping at the portable screen with her fingernail. “This is a portable sonar unit. It should be able to give us an accurate representation of where we are.”

      “And…?” Kane encouraged warily.

      “According to this,” Brigid said, showing Grant and Kane the display, “we’re standing in a wall. I mean, right inside a wall.”

      Kane felt decidedly uncomfortable when he heard that, a jab of fear running through his spine. Irritated, he calmed himself, demanding that he behave rationally. “It’s just an empty, forgotten redoubt, same as dozens of others we’ve visited,” Kane stated firmly, making his way along the balcony toward a stairwell. The stairwell was built in a subtle curve that doubled back on itself, forming a double helix.

      “What does it mean?” Grant asked. “Is your dohickey on the fritz?”

      “It’s tracking us just fine,” Brigid assured them. “No, this is something far more subtle. I think that this place, this Laboratory of the Incredible, has stealth technology that can confuse tracking systems, so that it cannot be spied upon.”

      Pushing back his hood, Grant ran a hand over his cropped hair and whistled. “When did you say this place was built?”

      “I’d say 1920-something,” Brigid replied. “Nobody’s quite sure. Flag would disappear for months at a time, and there’s every possibility that he built this place in sections as he required it. Likely, I’d say.”

      “Any idea how?” Grant asked.

      “He used some kind of sonic drill, I think,” Brigid said. “A pretty powerful one.”

      Kane looked around at the glasslike walls. “Stealth technology,” he said. “For a building. In 1920. You have got to be kidding.”

      “Professor Flag was a scientist of exceptional ability,” Brigid reminded him as she followed down the stairwell with Grant at her side. “Years—perhaps decades—ahead of any of his peers.”

      “So the guy was a genius,” Grant said.

      Brigid considered Grant’s statement for a few seconds before she responded. “That term might actually be construed as an insult,” she said. “The man was extraordinarily intelligent. ‘Genius’ doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.”

      Stepping from the curved stairwell, Kane walked a few paces across the laboratory and looked all around. “Any idea what this Flag guy looked like?” he asked as Brigid and Grant came over to join him.

      “I’ve examined the photographs in the Cerberus database,” Brigid began.

      “Let me guess,” Kane interrupted. “Six foot six, square jaw, short dark hair—military style?”

      Brigid nodded. “Why do you ask?”

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