Winter's Edge

Chapter 10 - Mounted

Ian

ARTIE and Abby's moods had turned nearly as dark and dank as the Old City hall we stood in, which called for a change of subject.

"So how big is this place?" I said.

They looked at each other, clueless.

Artie shrugged. "We're not really sure. It goes on for miles and miles in nearly every direction. Except the west side." He pointed, gesturing to an area somewhere on the other side of the theater. "It bent up into the mountains and flooded a long time ago, so its halls are filled with sediment layers, just like the mountain. That's where the mines are."

"Wow. How long have you been here?"

"Joseph and I broke through the wall of an abandoned gold mine and into Winter's Edge thirty years ago." Artie's speech was back to its usual quick pace again.

"Thirty years and you still don't know how big this place is?"

"I wish we did." Artie shook his head. "It's taken a long time to explore all of this and get the fiber-optics hung." He pointed at the brightly-glowing cables running across sides of the tunnel.

"But it looks like Killer's got that covered now," Abby said, her mood lightening as she looked around for the dog.

A sniffing sound came from below and something mounted my leg—intimately. Killer stared up at me with longing eyes. "Can we snuggle?" Then he proceeded to violate my leg.

I jumped and Abby screamed. A wicked sensation spiked through my stomach. The sickening energy dropped down through my leg, exploding out. Killer dislodged and slammed against the wall with a yelp. As he hopped to his feet, he cocked his head and whimpered, confused.

Artie nearly dropped the jackhammer, scrambling to block Killer from me.

Abby's eyebrows creased in the middle. "Aw, you hurt him."

I went slack-jawed at her. "Really? You're worried about him?"

She giggled.

Artie swatted Killer's backside. "Bad dog! I told you, they're not intruders." He looked at me with wilted features. "Sorry. Killer and I should probably get to the mines."

He headed off around the curved outside of the theater wall. Killer followed behind, butt wiggling from side to side with each puggish step.

That was the first time I'd actually been in danger of dying since I'd arrived, and it was from a robo-pug in the depths of an ancient underground city. What kind of screwy place had I ended up in?

I just shook my head and turned back to the engraving. Then a realization hit me. "Wait, these people had powers thousands of years ago?"

"Some of them, yes. The judges in the Bible had powers."

I cocked my head. "So these powers have nothing to do with mutation or evolution?"

"Of course not." She shook her head. "No experiments have ever shown mutations to make a species survive better. Epigeneticists found that DNA is not set in stone. There's no such thing as junk DNA like the Human Genome Project thought. In 2012, several papers came out from labs around the world finding that eighty percent of the supposed junk DNA was actively controlling the DNA. They're affected daily by what we eat, or think, or what's in our emotional subconscious. Powers are probably dormant abilities that we haven't discovered yet or that we forgot how to access at some point."

I stared through Abby, recalibrating my view of the world one tick. One very large tick. I wasn't sure I believed her. "Huh. I've never heard that before."