Gone In A Flash

Chapter 12: Sunday (3)

Chapter 12: Sunday (3)

The interior of the Count's hideout in the mountains appeared to be made up of a long, dark corridor, lit by honest-to-god flickering torches that were mounted in the walls with metal brackets. The lines of torches on both walls retreated off into the distance, and Hitch had to take a brief moment to wonder how expensive the entire place had to be to build and maintain. It probably presented a huge fire hazard.

He shook that thought off quickly, and retrieved his gun from his belt, clicking the safety off. He made his way down the torch-lit corridor as quietly and quickly as possible.

It wasn't long until he came across a doorway, set into the left side of the hallway. The door was closed, but not locked, and it opened with barely a squeak. Apparently the Count kept his base well-maintained. For an evil villain, the guy certainly had flair.

The room was empty of people, and filled with maps of all kinds - papering the walls, sitting in piles on desks, scattered over the floor in a seemingly careless manner. There was a large globe hanging from the ceiling that appeared to be turning slowly, powered by an invisible motor.

It was sort of interesting, but definitely not what he was looking for. He left the room, closing the door behind him, and moved on.

There was a door roughly every couple of meters, on alternating sides of the hallway. They were all unmarked, but none of them were actually locked. Their contents ranged widely, going from the type of thing you'd typically expect to see in somebody's house - rooms containing kitchens and cupboards, and one lined from wall-to-wall with towering wood bookshelves - to the decidedly more odd. One room was completely white and contained nothing but a gramophone sitting on the ground, playing one bar of music (Mozart, probably) over and over again. The acoustics were exquisite, and the gramophone looked antique, but all in all it was a very unsettling room.

Three fairly mundane rooms down from the gramophone room, Hitch encountered his first locked door, or what he thought was a locked door at first. In reality, it was just jammed, and took some slight force to open.

Inside was what could only be described as a torture chamber. Quite apart from the fact that it was dimly lit, and various devices of dubious purposes filled the place from wall-to-wall, the general atmosphere of it seemed to scream dungeon. Chains hung from the walls, and there was the distant sound of water dripping and rats squeaking irregularly - although that was probably just a theatrical touch on the Count's behalf, since there were no actual rats or leaks in the roof to be seen.

Hitch was very relieved to find that there was nobody in this room either. If he was honest with himself, he'd never have thought that even the Count, as theatrical and clichéd as he was, would have something like a torture chamber - it would almost be laughable, if it weren't so horrifying.

He left that room behind, and moved forward at a quicker pace. The corridor was starting to curve around on itself, and he noticed that the floor was sloping downwards. At his best guess, that probably meant that the hideout was contained within the mountain itself, taking up space in a kind of corkscrew spiral. He had no idea just how large the place was, or how long it would take to find Ruby (or anybody, really), and he needed to radio back in fifteen minutes or less - the agreed amount of time - or the rest of the agents would come in after him.

Two more rooms contained nothing but various forms of weaponry, all very neatly kept and maintained. Half of it would definitely be considered very, very illegal by any country's standards. Even with all of Hitch's training and experience in mind, he was beginning to get mildly nervous and more than slightly disturbed by the continued silence and emptiness.