“I fell unconscious when it happened to me,” he added.
She glanced wildly about for some way to fight back. All she saw was a web of pipes and power cables, a hive of bus bars, and warning signs in English, French, and German. If she grabbed the wrong thing she would die.
But was that so bad, given the alternative?
Then, over the shrill sound of the accelerator, there was a more guttural rattling.
She looked up. The crane had moved to a point directly above them. And now, from the shadows, a great black chain that had been suspended like the cord of a swag lamp swung down with its heavy yellow hook. It was arcing toward them, a thousand pounds in weight, as powerful as a scythe.
Riding it was a wild-eyed tour guide. “Rominy, get out of the way!”
Sam! He was aiming a pistol.
Raeder shouted in rage and aimed his own gun.
Rominy leaped and bit his hand.
He howled, both men shooting as Sam swept down like some demented Tarzan, bullets ricocheting like popcorn.
Rominy bit harder. Raeder, snarling, hurled her aside, his strength immense, inhuman. She skidded on the slick floor.
But the chain, which had been suspended above, cut down through the tunnel air with the power of a wrecking ball, clearing the cement floor by inches. With a tremendous clang it smashed into the side of the metal cage where the Shambhala staff glowed and knocked the whole apparatus askew. Sam went flying toward the piping on the far wall and hit the cables. There was a crack like thunder and a flash as blinding as the sun. Then all light winked out.
With a groan, the whine of the accelerator began to drop, its power short-circuited. They’d blown the mother of all fuses, apparently.
And, much to her amazement, Rominy was still alive.
Red emergency lighting came on. Sam lay like a dead man, clothes smoking, obviously electrocuted. The great chain and hook had come to rest against the pipe it had ruptured. The break sizzled, and a fog was filling the room. The Klaxons of alarms were going off, and she thought she could hear distant shooting.
Where was Raeder?
She got to her hands and knees. She was shaking, whether from fear or adrenaline she wasn’t sure. Probably both. She crawled to Sam and bent to his lips.
The wispiest of breaths. Barely, he was alive.
Rominy looked around. Two pistols lay on the floor. And half falling out of its bent cradle and still glowing faintly was the crystalline staff.
She could smell burning rubber and plastic.
Then a figure staggered out of the smoke and mist. It was Kurt.
Now he looked every bit his hundred and ten years, gaunt, lined, exhausted, furious. He lurched toward her like a broken monster, eyes filled with disbelief.
“He displaced the magnets,” the German croaked. “Proton beam. It went out of alignment. Seven trillion volts.”
She didn’t understand what he meant. But then she saw his head droop toward his torso. His shirt had been sliced open and there was a thin black line etched halfway across his chest. Even as he stared, it began to bleed the thinnest of sheets.
“The idiot cut me in two.” Then Raeder collapsed.
Now Rominy could hear explosions in the rooms above, shouts, doors slamming. It sounded like a battle. She had to hide! She no longer knew whom to trust, except Sam, who had somehow miraculously escaped Wewelsburg only to fry here! Should she stay with him? Take a gun?
Then she saw motion at the far end of the balcony they’d used to get to this chamber. She recognized the silhouette with sick dread. It was Jake.
A voice came into her head, a presence she’d never felt before. Take the staff. She flushed and felt renewed from a burst of energy. And knew, instantly, that she’d heard the voice of Benjamin Hood.
She looked around. Was he here?
Nothing. But his spirit? That was present. Take the staff.
She hesitated only a moment. Then she seized the crystalline rod, stood, and began a stumbling run into the tunnel where the big blue pipe ran. The rod vibrated slightly, making her palm tingle. Jake must not get his hands on the staff, not when it might have absorbed the necessary energy. So she fled in the only direction she could, straight down an apparently endless tunnel. She didn’t know where else to go. She began running faster as the shock wore off, carrying the ancient artifact. The tunnel gently curved, she realized, just as Jake had said it would. How long had he said the tube was? Seventeen miles?
She had to be marathon girl.
But there was no end, really. She could run and run, and just get back to where she started, again and again.
With Nazis after her. Now she did begin to sob.
“Rominy!” It was Jake’s shout, far behind.
And then she saw a bicycle.
55
Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland
October 4, Present Day
For the first time Rominy felt hope. Bicycles must be how the collider staff got from detector to detector. She was pedaling madly down the endless tunnel, the Shambhala staff jutting forward from her grip like a knight’s lance. It glowed. All she had to find was some exit from which she could escape and hide in the woods. She had no idea what was happening elsewhere in the giant machine, but it was a battle she wanted no part of. She’d done enough.
Kurt Raeder was finally dead.
Jake hadn’t fired at her. She’d heard him running, shouting, but not shooting. Was there a glimmer of feeling there? Or was it too dangerous down here to shoot? In any event, there was only one bike. Now she pedaled madly away in the red glow of emergency lighting, lungs heaving, terrified and exultant, leaving him behind.
Where was everybody? Why was she the only one down here?
Then she remembered Raeder had said something about radiation, and Barrow had prudently retreated.
Was the radiation gone, now that the power had blacked out?
Or was she irreversibly poisoning herself?
I just have to live long enough to hide, Rominy thought. She’d sneak through the woods like an animal, not chancing a meeting with anyone, afraid of her own shadow, staff in hand. Then, if she could find Lake Geneva, she’d hurl the cursed thing into the deepest part and let it sink like Excalibur, drowned like the rest of Shambhala.
Then she could finally grieve, for an identity and a past in tatters.
The tunnel debouched into another large machine like the one where she’d descended, another temple of physics painted in brilliant colors. She considered ascending to the surface there. But it seemed too close to the battle behind her, and too close to Jake Barrow. Balconies led her past it and onward to the tunnel on its far side. Particle detectors seemed to be spaced every few miles. She’d try the next one.
It felt good just to pedal and flee.
The tunnel was lit the color of hell, Klaxons blaring in the distance, pipes extending to infinity. She’d entered the mythical underworld.
Mile followed mile.
She was gasping now, as weary and sore as she’d ever been, and her bicycle slowed. Surely Jake was far behind. The opposite side of the ring would be, what, nine miles away? Less as the crow flies, but any farther would just bring her around and closer to the Nazis again. Could she guess how far that was? As she rode she noticed that blue lights in red boxes gave a flash as she passed them, and they seemed spaced about every half mile. Say eight miles… how many had flashed? Ten, perhaps, or five miles. When she got anywhere close to sixteen and there was a way up, she’d try that.
And after Lake Geneva? She had no money, no passport, no clothes, and no friends. Sam was probably dying. The police, perhaps. But who knew how many millions of dollars of damage she and Sam had caused or deaths they’d initiated? Would the authorities be in on the conspiracy, too? Yet prison, if it came to that, seemed a snug refuge right now. Or would they just take her into a courtyard and shoot her, like in the movies?