Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Seventy

"The Great Safe is this way," I said, pointing to the sign warning of extreme danger.

Durwood looked up from wedging a grenade into one of the limestone's deep grooves. "Could be another dozen rooms, one worse than the next."

"Right—we lucked out," Quaid said, smearing blood from his scraped arm. "You keep picking up the dice and rolling, eventually the house wins."

I pointed out the AmDye schematics had said there would be four chambers. "Oubliette, plants, nanoblades. This is the last."

Durwood said, "Schematic also had 'em vertical, not horizontal like they are."

But I heard acknowledgment in his tone. Grudging, but it was there.

Once a matter of honor was put to Durwood, a matter of bravery, he couldn't shirk. His psyche wouldn't allow it.

One down, three to go.

"Henri said it would be dark at the very end," I argued, pointing at the black, black glass in front of us. "Dark! The Great Safe is right here."

Yves and Piper, who'd both overheard my exchange with Henri, looked at me cockeyed like I was stretching it.

Quaid gestured to a row of symbols that ranged from skulls to a gas mask to the biohazard triple scythe.

'Dark' seems a bit of an understatement," he said. "I don't see us waltzing in with a couple flashlight, collecting the gift-wrapped kernel sourcecode, and saving the planet."

Piper said, for the tenth time, "Hell no."

Yyes had heard rumors of a hyper-gravity project but assumed them to be false. "The idea of microscopic black holes, constrained, bent to our scientists' whims." The old man shivered. "Surely they never managed it."

A fraught look was passing through the group when bullets began zinging from behind. Suddenly a fine limestone spray was everywhere.

I met Durwood's eye.

He looked at the grenade in his hand.

"This stops now," I said. "The evil. Here and now."

He pulled the pin and rolled the grenade toward our pursuers.

I yanked open the opaque glass door and we all spilled into the chamber.

Behind us, the grenade detonated. The first part of the explosion was bright in my ears, then the door closed and there was nothing—no sound, no light, no wet humidity. A full and unrelenting void.

All directional sense deserted me. I raised my shoe to step and had no clue when—or if—it would find solid ground. (When it did, the surface was gravely and porous.) The sensory block was that oppressive. I heard the start of murmurs around me—quickly swallowed—and whooshing that made me think of a roomful of washing machines on Delicate.

I saw fleeting eddies of light, such transitory flashes I wondered if they only existed in my mind.

Yves Pomeroy hissed from somewhere, "Do not leave the gravel!"

Imagining Fabienne Rivard and Blake Leathersby hot on our trail, I charged into the mysterious void. My ears and heart thumped, my thoughts blared, my eyes groped for any cue. It was like falling forward through a cavern.

After several crunching footfalls, my left foot landed quietly—on a smooth surface.

I had barely registered this as a problem when an organ-rattling force jerked me rightward.

Both legs flew out from underneath, my torso suddenly parallel to the floor. Next I felt Durwood's rough hand around my wrist.

"What was that?" I said, my brain still processing, still spinning.