After fifty feet, the tunnel opened into a large chamber, with three more passages radiating away in different directions like the spokes of a wheel.
“I’ll sweep this room,” Pierce said. “You guys scout the passages. Be careful. We can’t afford to lose anyone in here.”
“Yes, dad,” Gallo said.
Fiona giggled for a moment, but then seemed to grow more serious. As she studied the passages, contemplating the choices, Pierce saw her lips moving ever so slightly. He exchanged a glance with Gallo, who just nodded, confirming his suspicions.
Fiona was using the Mother Tongue, asking the earth to tell her which way to go. Or trying to, anyway. After a few seconds of this, she started down the middle passage, but whether it was because the ground had spoken to her, or just a lucky guess, there was no telling.
“You think she knows something?” he whispered.
Gallo shrugged. “I wouldn’t bet against her.”
Pierce checked the display on his phone and saw a circle-slash where the signal bars should have been. Zdanovich had likely already discovered that they weren’t there in any official capacity, and might even have contacted the authorities. Pierce didn’t think their deception would warrant an arrest, but they could be kicked off the site and deported.
Gambling on whether or not Fiona had sensed something during her communion with the stone was exactly what he was going to have to do, and time was the currency at stake.
“All in,” he said, heading after the young woman. Gallo and Lazarus fell in behind him.
The passage sloped downward, the gradient slight but constant. The wall curved as they continued onward, spiraling down. It wasn’t perfect evidence of Originator influence, but it was very suggestive.
He quickened his pace, catching up with Fiona, but they were forced to stop. Although the passage continued at least as far as their flashlights could reveal, it was flooded.
“Must be a cave-in further down,” Pierce said. He glanced over at Fiona. “Is there something important down there?”
Fiona shook her head, uncertain. “I’m not… I don’t know what this is. It’s like this whole place is talking to me.” She turned, a guilty look on her face. “Not literally, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I’m not thinking anything, Fi.” Pierce studied the flooded passage, wondering if he should try wading out into it with the GPR unit.
And if I find something, he thought, then what?
“If we could shift whatever’s blocking the passage,” Lazarus said, “it might drain out. A small shaped charge might do the trick.”
“Or it might bring the roof down on our heads,” Pierce countered, shaking his head. “Let’s keep that plan in reserve. Fi, I hate to ask, but do you think you could…” He left the question unfinished, dangling in the air between them.
“Use the Force? That’s why you brought me along, isn’t it?”
Pierce forced a smile. “Can you do it?”
“I can try.” She turned to the flooded passage again, took a deep breath and closed her eyes. A minute passed with no visible effect, then two. Pierce was just about to call the attempt a failure when ripples began to distort the mirror-like surface of the water. Then the flood disappeared, revealing damp stone. Further down the passage, where the water was deeper, the process was more gradual, but the water line dropped. Somewhere further down the tunnel, the dam had broken.
It’s working, Pierce thought. He turned to Fiona, ready to congratulate her when she left off her efforts. He was surprised to find her staring back at him, wide-eyed and horrified.
“It wasn’t me.”
“Not—”
A deep boom, like the inside of a thunderclap, interrupted. The sound was so loud, so intense, that Pierce was knocked off his feet. He lay on the cave floor, stunned, lying beside the others. He struggled to rise, but the disorientation lingered. The ground shook beneath him.
Cracks appeared in the limestone walls, radiating out like tongues of lightning. The air grew thick with grit and dust.
“Fi!” Gallo shouted. “Whatever you’re doing—”
“I’m not doing anything!”
Lazarus’s voice roared above the din. “It’s an earthquake! We need to move!”
The big man reached out from the gloom, pulling Pierce to his feet, but the ground was still lurching back and forth like the deck of a storm-tossed ship. Pierce reached out to Fiona, but another shift threw him against the wall. Lazarus succeeded where he had failed, scooping Fiona up in his arms. “Go!”
Pierce found Gallo leaning against the opposite wall. He took her hand, but before they could start back up the passage, another thunderous detonation wrenched their world sideways. The dust cloud, illuminated by the diffused light of their headlamps, began swirling. A blast of air, like the wind ahead of an approaching subway train, raced down the passage. There could only be one explanation.
“It’s collapsing,” Pierce shouted.
Large pieces of rubble began raining down on them.
“What do we do?” Gallo said.
Pierce turned, whipping her around to face the other direction. “Run!” And then a second later, Pierce yelled again, “Down!”
THREE
Although she had lived most of her life in the stable — geologically speaking — Seattle area, Felice Carter knew an earthquake when she felt one. The floor lurched beneath her, the jolt strong enough to bounce the lab table and everything on it into the air. The heavier pieces of equipment began vibrating across the tabletop. Lighter items — mostly glassware — went flying, shattering on impact with the floor or the walls.
Carter’s first thought was outrage at the hours, days even, worth of research that had just been destroyed. None of the genetic samples or chemical agents were dangerous, but replacing them would be time-consuming and expensive.
Her second thought was that she needed to get to safety.
The floor was still moving, though not with the same violence as the initial bump, and she was able to stay upright. The question was, where to go? She recalled hearing that the safest place to be in an earthquake was a doorway — something about load-bearing walls and the shape of the door frame.
Was that still true when the doorway in question was in a subterranean laboratory, a hundred feet below the foundation of a thousand-plus-year-old tower?
Absent any better options, she decided she should give it a try.
As she reached the open door, hugging the upright frame to stay on her feet, the scientist in her wondered about the epicenter and the magnitude of the temblor. Her field was biology — specifically biochemistry and genetic engineering. Seismology was a different branch of the science tree, but thinking in terms of data and numbers — the universal language of all the sciences — made it seem a little less frightening.
She remembered a few things from her general science courses. Earthquakes occurred when there was movement along fault lines, cracks in the Earth’s crust that were sometimes pushed together or pulled apart by geological forces. The initial jolt at the beginning, when the stored energy in the opposing land masses was released, was the moment of greatest violence — like a stone cast into a lake, disrupting the surface with a chaotic splash. The subsequent shaking was the ripple effect, the shockwave spreading out from the epicenter. That was not to say that the gentler shaking wasn’t dangerous. As long as the earth was moving, there was risk, but Carter took comfort in the fact that the worst had passed. Aside from a few broken test tubes, the damage appeared to be minimal.