James Axler – Exile to Hell

Kane closed his eyes and rushed headlong into the abyss of infinity, filled with spheres of brilliant light and swarms of stars.

Chapter Thirty

The first thing Kane saw when he opened his eyes was a square wall made of thick, mortared concrete blocks, not the translucent armaglass.

The door was a rectangle of steel set in the wall facing him, a wheel projecting from the riveted mass.

From overhead, a thread of light shone from a single fixture. By its feeble illumination, he saw Brigid and Grant groan, stir and sit up.

Brigid brushed back a loose strand of hair from her black-striped face. “Everybody feel all right?”

They did, none of them suffering from the nausea, dizziness and headaches that had afflicted them after their first jump. Grant climbed to his feet. The ceiling was low, and he couldn’t stand at his full height.

“They must’ve tested this thing on midgets,” he muttered.

Kane stood up and went to the door. He had to stoop slightly, too. He put his hands on the wheel-lock, giving it a clockwise twist. It didn’t budge. Taking and holding a deep breath, he threw all of his weight against it.

Slowly, resistantly the wheel turned. With Grant’s help, he was able to get a hand-over-hand spin going. The solenoids creaked aside, and Grant pushed against the steel door. Flexible rubber seals made a sucking noise as the thick portal swung open on squealing hinges. He stepped out first, Sin Eater in hand. Kane and Brigid followed, watchful and cautious.

They were in a medium-size room with a dozen desks, most of them covered with computer terminals and key-boards. A control console ran the length of one wall, consisting primarily of liquid-crystal displays and gauges, though a few indicator lights blinked and flashed purposefully. On the other side of the wall, behind the console, the electronic whine slowly wound down and faded altogether. As the sound disappeared, the lights on the console went out, plunging the room into darkness.

Grant handed Brigid a flashlight, and she swept the beam around. She murmured, “This is where Lakesh devoted thirty years of his life. So much stolen from him. Sad.”

“What’s sad about it?” asked Grant gruffly. “That devotion bought him survival when most of the world’s ‘useless eaters’ were vaporized. His life wasn’t stolenit was bought and paid for.”

“Quiet,” Kane whispered.

The door at the far end of the room was wood paneled. It bore a knob rather than a lever or a sec-code keypad affixed to the frame. Kane walked to the door and slowly turned the knob. Brigid and Grant fanned out behind him, taking cover behind desks and drawing their weapons.

The door was unlocked, and he moved out into a wide, wood-paneled corridor. It stretched to his left and his right. Even with his image intensifier at full output, the hallway was shadowed and dim.

Brigid moved up beside him and said, “To the left here.”

He started down it, moving rapidly and silently on the nap of the carpet.

They passed two doors, which were unlocked. Nothing lay in the rooms beyond them but empty spaces and a few pieces of dusty furniture. They came to an intersecting corridor and peered around the corner. To the right, a few yards away, a sign hung above a varnished wooden door. The faded lettering read Not An Exit. No Unauthorized Personnel. A red triangle bisected by three black vertical lines was stamped at the bottom of the sign.

Gripping their blasters tightly, they eased around the corner, careful to keep their bodies to one side. The door had a keypad instead of a knob. Brigid placed the Syne against it and initialized the decryption mechanism. They crouched on either side of the door, Grant covering the way they came, tensely waiting for the Syne to do its work. A few moments later, the computer-controlled lock slid aside.

Kane gingerly pushed the door open, then moved in, the other two sliding in after him, to his left and right. It was an empty, bare-walled landing. Painted on the wall was a red down-pointing arrow, and the words To Levels Five And Six. Carefully they soft-footed down the wide concrete steps, careful not to touch the metal banisters.