Except that there came a point where the draft from the shaft behind them became mixed with the eddying current of air that was traveling from the opposite direction. These currents met in a swirl that bespoke of one thing alone—a shaft leading down toward the purification plant.
Jak slowed his pace, aware that a wrong move could plunge him headfirst down a sheer drop, with not enough room to twist and save himself.
“Wait,” he said softly to the party at his heels.
The Gate warriors slowed to a halt while Jak edged forward to the point where the air currents appeared to meet.
His fingers felt in the darkness and found the uneven and slightly jagged lip of a shaft. Inching his torso forward, he peered down, the crosscurrents of gently rippling air making his hair swirl gently around his head, white even in the lack of light. He couldn’t discern anything beneath. There was only a total blackness.
“This way down. Not know where lead, so be careful,” he said softly over his shoulder, eliciting the barest murmur of agreement from those to his rear. Aware that any sound would travel along the shafts, and perhaps even be amplified by a trick of acoustics, all were concerned with keeping noise and communication to a bare and essential minimum.
Jak contorted his wiry frame, straining muscles so that he could bring his knees up beneath his chin and pivot on his tailbone, ignoring the temporary pain on the hard surface. He wanted to turn his whole body in the narrow shaft, so that his feet instead of his head would hang over the lip of the downward shaft.
He could feel the sweat gather in a pool down the small of his back, could feel the camou jacket scrape against the concrete walls, the metal patches sparking with the force of their contact, could feel the muscles in his thighs cramp and burn as he pushed his body around so that he was facing the direction he wished.
Finally he was there. He paused to exhale slowly and deeply, allowing the adrenaline pulsing through him to calm, and for the fire in his tortured muscles to subside. He knew they would soon be protesting again, and for far longer and a far better reason.
Breathing slowly and deeply, Jak extended one leg across the shaft. It was about three feet wide, and would be about the right width for the maneuver he planned. Sliding over the edge of the lip, and bringing his knee up so that it tensed and supported his back against the wall that slid up behind him as he began his descent, Jak began the slow and painful descent toward the next level. From previous experience, he knew that the downward shafts were always staggered, so there was only the slightest chance that he was taking them down into the purification plant. If the shaft led straight down, there was no way anyone’s muscles would last the distance. It was a necessary risk.
“NEARLY THERE,” Dean whispered to the Gate warriors descending from above him.
Like Jak, Dean had led a Gate party through the shafts. He had felt a sense of unease as he entered and began the trek. The last time he had been in such a situation also involved the Illuminated Ones—or at least, a connection to them—when he escaped from the mad mutie queen Jenna and her tame sec chief back in the ville of Raw. That time, Dean was weakened by the torture that Jenna had put him through in the name of her experiments with genetics. This time he was rested up and at a peak of fitness. But still, all the old fear came flooding back to him as he made his way through the narrow concrete shafts.
Ultimately it made him more determined to focus on the task ahead, and when Dean came across the first downward shaft, he didn’t hesitate in negotiating it. Unlike their opposite party, Dean’s band of Gate warriors was lucky in coming across two downward shafts soon after entering the maze of the air conditioning. As a result, they made good time and were now close to the point where the air conditioning and purification shafts ran parallel with the first level of service ducts for the redoubt.