He opened the door and stepped out into an open-ended warehouse almost big enough to be an aircraft hangar, it was empty, decrepit, and heavily shadowed, but the brisk night air that breezed through made it almost pleasant—
• and there was Ada, stepping onto a raised plat-form just outside of the hangar, disappearing behind what looked like a section of a train. It was an industrial transport lift—and from the well-oiled look of the rails that ran through the warehouse, it was one part of the abandoned factory that hadn’t been completely abandoned.
“Ada!”
Keeping his wounded arm tightly pressed to his body, Leon ran toward the lift—and felt dull anger as he heard the rising thrum of the transport’s engines, the heavy mechanical sound spilling out into the clear night sky. Ada was leaving, she hadn’t gone to “check” on anything—
• but she’s not going anywhere until she tells me why.
Leon ran out into the moonlit open, hearing the door to the transport slam shut as he skirted a control console and stepped up to the vibrating metal plat-form, nearly tripping on the brightly painted steps. Before he could catch his balance, the transport started its descent; three-foot-high panels of corru-gated metal rose all the way around the train, contain-ing the large platform as it slid smoothly down into the ground.
Leon grabbed for the door handle as the darkness swept up around the humming transport, the sky dwindling into a smaller and smaller starry patch overhead. The cool, pale light of the moon and stars was quickly replaced by the electric orange of the transport’s mercury lamps.
He stumbled inside, and saw the startled look on Ada’s face as she stood up from a bench bolted to one side, as she half-raised her Beretta and then lowered it again—and a flash of guilt, there and gone in the time it took for him to close the door.
For a moment, neither of them spoke, staring at each other as the room continued its smooth descent. Leon could almost see her working to come up with an explanation—and as tired as he was, he decided that he just wasn’t in the mood.
“Where are we going?” he asked, making no effort to keep the anger out of his voice.
Ada sighed—and sat down again, her shoulders sagging. “I think it’s the way out,” she said quietly. She looked up at him, her dark gaze searching his. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have tried to leave without you, but I was afraid. . . ”
He could hear real sorrow in her voice, see it in her eyes, and felt his anger give a little. “Afraid of what?” “That you wouldn’t make it. That 7 wouldn’t make it, trying to keep both of us safe.”
“Ada, what are you talking about?” Leon moved to the bench, sitting down beside her. She looked down at her hands, speaking softly.
“When I was looking for you, back in the sewers, I found a map,” she said. “It showed what looked like some kind of an underground laboratory or factory—and if the map was right, there’s a tunnel that runs from there to somewhere outside of the city.” She met his gaze again, honestly distressed. “Leon, I didn’t
think you were in any condition to make a trip like that, like this—and I was scared that if I brought you with me, if it was a dead end or some-thing attacked us. . . .”
Leon nodded slowly. She’d been trying to protect herself—and him.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I should have told you, I shouldn’t have just left you there like that. After all you’ve done for me, I—I at least owed you the truth.” The guilt and shame in her eyes wasn’t something that could be faked. Leon reached for her hand, ready to tell her that he understood and that he didn’t blame her—
• when there was a resounding thump outside. The entire transport shook, just a slight tremble, but enough to make both of them tense.
“Probably a rough spot in the track....” Leon said, and Ada nodded, gazing at him with an intensity that made him pleasantly uncomfortable, a warmth spreading through his entire body—
BAM!
• and Ada flew off the bench, thrown to the floor as a massive, curled thing slammed through the wall, crashing through the sheet metal of the vehicle’s side as though it were made of paper. It was a fist, a fist with bone claws, each of them nearly a foot long, the claws dripping with—
“Ada!”
The giant hand withdrew, its bloody talons ripping new holes in the metal wall as Leon dropped to the floor, grabbing Ada’s limp body, pulling her into the center of the transport. A terrible shriek pealed through the moving darkness outside—and it was the same furious cry that they’d heard in the station but louder, more violent—and even less human than before.
Leon held on to Ada with his one good arm, feeling the warm trickle of blood seeping out from her right side, feeling her dead weight against his heaving chest. “Ada, wake up! Ada!”
Nothing. He lowered her gently to the floor, then pulled at the bloody hole in her dress, just above her hip. Blood was welling up from two deep punctures; there was no way to tell how bad, and he ripped at the fabric, tearing off” the bottom few inches of her short dress and pressing the wadded material against the wound—
• and again the monster screamed, and the rage in its throaty howl was nothing to what Leon was feeling, staring down at Ada’s still and closed face. He stretched her tight dress over the makeshift bandage, fixing it in place as best he could, then stood up and unstrapped the Remington.
Ada had taken care of him, had protected him when he couldn’t protect himself. Leon loaded the shotgun grimly, feeling no pain at all as he prepared to return the favor.
When they reached what looked like the end of the line, it was Sherry who figured out where her mother must have gone. They’d walked into yet another open, shadowy room, but it only had the one door; there seemed to be no other way out of the cavernous chamber, unless Annette had jumped off the raised floor and trekked off through the unlit emptiness that surrounded them.
They stood at the edge of the darkness, trying to see down into the shadows and having no luck. The room was set up almost like a loading dock: a railed platform ran from the door along the back wall, then
ended abruptly, giving way to a seemingly endless void. Either Annette had climbed down and navi-gated some secret path through the dark, or Claire had been mistaken about which way she’d gone. So what now? Go back, or try to follow?
She didn’t want to do either one—although going back pretty much beat the crap out of the idea of walking into a pitch-black abyss. And Leon was probably still back there somewhere . . . “Could it be a train? Is this like a train station?” Sherry asked, and as soon as she said “train,” Claire gave herself a solid mental kick in the ass. Platform, railings, about a thousand overhead “pipes.”...
Claire grinned at Sherry, shaking her head at her own stupidity; she was getting flaky, no doubt about it.
“Yeah, I think it is,” she said, “though you guessed it, not me. My brain must be on strike. .. ” The small computer console on one side of the platform, the one she’d dismissed as unimportant, was probably the control board. Claire headed for it, Sherry following along and clutching absently at her gold locket as she described the noises she’d heard, down in the drainage well.
“... and it was moving away, like a train would. It scared me pretty bad, too. It was loud.”
Sure enough, just beneath the small monitor screen on the standing console was a recall command code and a ten-key. Claire tapped in the code and hit “enter”—and the chamber was filled with the smooth hum of working machinery: the sound of a train. “You’re one smart cookie, you know that?” Claire said, and Sherry practically beamed, her entire face crinkling with her sweet smile. Claire wrapped an arm around her shoulders and they walked back to the edge of the platform to wait.