The creature stepped back from King and emitted a loud rising shriek that sounded like a referee tweeting on a whistle. All of the wraiths in the giant space were suddenly silent. The echoing chamber fell quiet except for the scratching noise of clawed hands and feet clinging to the walls and concrete support columns. Their tattered cloaks fluttered as they moved, but the creatures had stopped their incessant noise. To King’s relief, the creatures remained docile.
“Step closer to me, Asya,” he said quietly. He felt her brush up against his back. “Now walk with me, very slowly.”
King took a step forward into the crowd of wraiths.
Asya shuffled forward with him. He took another step, and the wraiths ahead of them parted to reveal the white concrete floor. King began to walk forward at a slow pace, with Asya right behind him. A wraith from the left came close, and he turned to look at it, shining the LED up, so his face would be lit in the harsh white glow.
“King!” he told it, and the creature receded into the crowd.
“Why are they letting us pass?” Asya asked, keeping one hand on his arm.
“The important thing is they are. The question is, for how long? Remember in Malta, they wouldn’t let us take the file. For some reason, I’m off limits as long as I play by Alexander’s rules.”
As King and Asya moved forward, the wraiths filled in the space behind them, never allowing them more than a circle of twenty feet in diameter.
“No chance of retreat,” Asya said, looking behind them. “They are following.”
“That’s fine,” King said, gaining confidence. “I am King!” He shouted, and the crowd of Forgotten flinched back, widening the circle of clear floor around King and Asya.
They had covered perhaps three hundred feet from the ladder, with the wraiths curiously clustering around. Occasionally one would dart closer, and King would raise the flashlight and speak his callsign. Then the creatures would dart back to the group.
“I think we’re almost under the mosque,” King said. The gigantic room ended just ahead at a large, flat wall, with a single unmarked metal door, the only aberration. Several wraiths remained in front of the door.
As King approached the door, more of the wraiths clustered before it, blocking his path.
“I don’t think they will allow—” Asya began, but King pressed on, shoving some of the wraiths away from the door. Others slid away at the sight of his forcefulness.
The gray, steel door had a knob, but no lock. King reached for it and unslung the AK-47 from his back. Asya drew her weapon as well. The wraiths kept their distance around them, but the circle now gave them ten feet of floor and ten feet of vertical wall. The wraiths swayed and hissed softly, as if awaiting instructions.
King slowly raised the AK in his left hand to a 45 degree angle, still careful to point it at the floor, and not directly at any of the gyrating creatures. With his right hand, he reached for the door knob. Some of the hisses increased in volume. He got the idea that while the Forgotten were, for some reason, standing down, once he opened the door, all bets would be off.
“Be ready to run in after me,” King said. “Three…two…one. Now!”
King whipped open the door, took one step and stopped short. But Asya ran into his back, shoving him forward into the obstacle.
The other side of the door was bricked up from top to bottom with old orange bricks and whitish mortar.
King coughed as the air was knocked from his lungs and his face pressed against the stone. But the impact was harmless. He recovered quickly and turned back to face Asya and the wraiths, who were hooting and shrieking again, as they had when he had first switched on the light.
I knew this was too simple.
The circle of wraiths moved in, hissing and howling.
FOURTEEN
Queen shuffled in her seat, trying to get comfortable. The flight would be a few hours, and she was already wound up. It didn’t help that this plane, a duplicate of the original Crescent, a stealth VTOL troop transport, was more spartan than its predecessor. Named for the craft’s curved flying-wing shape, the original Crescent had perished in battle the previous year, when King had piloted it into a tear in the fabric of reality, stopping an incursion from another dimension.
Although the half-billion dollar vehicle had been totaled, the move had arguably saved the world. Deep Blue had arranged for the team to keep Crescent’s twin, the Persephone, which had been assisting in the battle. Now renamed Crescent II, the current vehicle was Endgame’s for the foreseeable future.
Like its namesake, radar-reflective material covered the ship from one tip of its moon shape across 80 feet of breadth to its other tip. The giant, flat plane could carry 25,000 pounds of load and travel at above Mach 2. With VTOL capability, the plane could pick the team up anywhere and drop them off just as easily, but Queen didn’t like it. The original Crescent had been fairly plush inside. Crescent II was far more utilitarian, and Queen found herself missing that small bit of comfort in her life. She spent enough time in uncomfortable holes in the ground. She just hadn’t realized how much she had enjoyed the downtime in the original Crescent until she was faced with hours of nothing to do in Crescent II.
Her agitation over the uncomfortable seating came through in her voice when she spoke.
“You know the Three Ridleyteers are going to screw us the first chance they get. And if they don’t, the real Ridley will.” She tugged on the straps on her impact-resistant battle-armor suit, tightening a plate of gray metal and foam on her forearm.
“No kidding. I don’t particularly relish the thought of having to deal with four of that ass-clown,” Rook, clad in a similar battle suit, nodded toward the flat-screen LED monitor on the wall of the small troop area, showing the three clones strapped and chained to the wall of the rear cargo area of the plane. The Ridleys weren’t going anywhere, and the team needed some privacy to develop a plan as they rocketed across the Atlantic Ocean for Tunisia. “We can’t trust them, Blue.”
Deep Blue was with the team through their headsets, via an encrypted transmission across a military satellite. “I know, Rook. But they make some compelling arguments. Or at least Seth does, while his companions pretend to be deaf and mute.”
“Pretend?” Rook looked shocked, and turned to Queen, Knight and Bishop, as if to ask whether he was the only one that hadn’t seen through the deception. The others looked equally mystified.
“How?” Queen asked, and it was understood she was addressing Deep Blue.
“I’ve been carefully watching them the whole time. Enos reacts to loud noises, so he’s not really deaf. While they’ve been in the cargo area, I’ve seen Jared’s lips moving, although the audio sensors in the compartment haven’t picked up any sound. It’s likely he’s fooling too. Doesn’t matter. You’re right, Queen. They will turn on you at the first opportunity, but not until they have Ridley back. So stay sharp, and when the time is right, we’ll turn the tables on them.”
“What have you got planned?” Knight looked up from a fashion magazine he was reading.
“First things first. You need to remove Ridley’s regenerative abilities. Our scientists have had time to work on the original formula we used to cure George Pierce, back when Ridley infected him with the Hydra’s DNA. The formula now requires just a small dose to inhibit the regenerative strand. There’s a case on the bottom of the locker, Queen, if you’d retrieve it.”