Terminal (Terminal trilogy #1)

3: Meet cute

By the elevator, at the very end of Wrath, there was one hallway I had never been down. Actually, I had never even gotten a proper look down it- it was guarded by a hellhound, largest I'd ever seen, and though she was often dozing off it was utterly impossible to sneak around her.

She took up the entire hallway, a giant off brown wolf with little white dapples that would have been endearing if she wasn't so monstrous. Sydney approached her and she opened one of her grey eyes for a second. Then, she began to stand up, and in another motion she was human shaped again, a short woman who gave a polite little bow to Sydney and exchanged a small talk.

After we had passed, I looked behind us and caught her changing back again and settling onto the floor with a wave of dust.

"So what exactly is down here?" Christina said, "The pit, I'd think, but that's not quite top secret."

"Possibly the only part of Hell kept under heavy guard," Sydney said with a smirk. I think she was just having fun bringing us here, vague threats notwithstanding. There was a good chance she was fucking with the both of us.

There was a heavy slant as we headed down to what I was now sure was the pit- but Christina was right, though the pit was under some guard it wasn't exactly exclusive, you could catch an elevator from Pride straight to it. There was have been some other room attached to this hall that I hadn't seen before.

At the end of the hall was a set of large metal doors, and beyond it was the pit room, as expected. About forty feet up were the windows to Phillip's office, though no one was looking down on us from here.

The pit itself was a nasty sight, like a regulated sinkhole. It was deep as hell, and looked like it may have opened without warning, the blue tiles of the floor jagged around the edges. Sydney took us past it, but I couldn't resist a small peae down to the rift below. Didn't look like anything but darkness, but I had been through enough times to know better.

"Oh," said Christina, suddenly, and I agreed the moment I realized why.

At the other end of the room was a white door against the white wall, with two silver locks. Somehow, I had never really taken note of it before, but its presence wasn't a surprise either. I had merely not bothered to remember it.

Sydney unlocked the door with two keys off a keychain and went inside, motioning for us to follow. "This is the part you might not like," she said, but her maniacal sense of imposition seemed to have died down a little, like she now had to admit we were going to be pretty safe.

The room was bright, white, and contained no obvious threats. A single woman was sitting in one chair out of many, clipboard in hand, as she watched the wall.

Or not wall- one way mirror. On the other side was a bed, a bathroom set, a table with restraints, and a sleeping man.

"General Westman," the sitting woman said, getting to her feet and giving a small bow. "Who are they?"

"Just here for kicks," Sydney said, suddenly pushing me forward like a parent encouraging their child to socialize.

I stepped forward and stiffly gave Marie her letter. "It's from Kell," I said.

She sighed the moment she opened the envelope and read the note. "Again? Really?" She looked to Sydney. "It's what you'd think." She walked over to a small steel table in the corner of the room. Below it was a mini-freezer, and out of that she pulled a ring. She dropped it into my palm, and before I could get a look at it, closed my fingers over it. "For Kell," she said.

"I have a feeling I could use a new one too," Sydney said, grimacing. She took the large ring off her finger and gave it Marie, who returned with a new one from the freezer.