Down they went again, deeper and deeper into the ground, through the long, spiraling tube. More weird noises. More slippery ground. More security cameras blown from their stations. They came to another door. It was gone in another brilliant flash. They stumbled into another chamber, but this one was as different as one could imagine from the one before. There was no silver or gold or any wild flying vehicles here. This place was dark, scary. Full of shadows and ghosts.
And yet, once again, it was a place that Hunter recognized. Indeed, he'd been here before, too. On his tour after winning the Earth Race, they brought him to the sacred place where the Big Generator itself was located. And this was a perfect re-creation of that place. But that time, the Big Generator was here, and it was a large black piece of stone, or something that looked like stone. It was imposing and mysterious and really didn't strike Hunter at the time as being able to generate anything. Yet it was the most holy stone of the entire Galaxy, and it was from it, so the Em-pirists claimed, that all power and knowledge sprang forth.
Though he was now in almost the exact same room, there was no intimidating obelisk here. No Big Generator. Instead, in the middle of the rather musty, dirty room was a device so small Hunter could have held it in his hands. He couldn't help but go over to it, touch it, and indeed pick it up. And strangely enough — and here it got funny again — the device was a generator. An old, disconnected, drained-of-oil electrical generator. Something that could provide power to nothing more elaborate than a fork truck or a car, or maybe a small static machine of some sort back on old Earth.
Hunter would have laughed if it hadn't been so absolutely fucking weird.
Another door was blown off, and their descent into madness continued. This time the tunnel was steeper, darker, slipperier. Four TV cameras were blown from their mountings; another Klaxon was silenced. Again at the end of the pack, Hunter was running with his head turned, expecting at any time to see an army of security guards coming around the corner they'd just turned. At this point, in fact, he wouldn't have been surprised to see a bunch of tin soldiers with buckethead helmets chasing him. That's how crazy things had become.
At last they came to the final door. This one was big and black and looked stronger and thicker than the rest by a factor of ten. The Spetsnaz soldiers unloaded all their explosives and quickly placed them around the huge portal. This would not be a blow and go. They had to take cover for this one. The squad leader touched the trigger terminals, and indeed there was a fantastically huge explosion. The door came off.
Another deeper chamber lay beyond.
And finally, they found what they were looking for. Sitting in the middle of this hall was a perfectly round, gleaming flying saucer.
"Damn…" Hunter said out loud.
He'd seen one of these things before, too.
Before he could take another breath, all the Russian soldiers turned to him, and the squad leader said: "You do know how to fly this thing, don't you?"
But Hunter never got to answer. Suddenly, a bullet went through his back, hit three of his ribs, and exited through his collarbone, making it impossible for him to speak. An instant later, a second bullet went through his arm and out his stomach. A third punctured his thigh. He was spun around by the force of these bullets to see that the small army of security men he'd feared was on their tail had finally materialized from within the smoke of the blown-away door. Leading the charge were the two security guards he'd left up on the mountain, still in their underwear. They were the ones who'd shot him.
The gunfight that broke out now was ferocious. Bullets were suddenly flying everywhere, bouncing off the walls, the ceiling, even the flying saucer. Hunter was down on the oily floor in a heap, feeling like he had a couple tons of concrete pressing on his chest. Could he be killed here, in this fantasy world? The answer, bleeding out of his body right now, seemed to be a very frightening yes.
He started crawling away, feeling the heat of bullets zinging by him. He crawled past the Russian soldiers who were firing madly at the security guards. They ignored him as he dragged his near lifeless body by them, leaving a sickening trail of blood in his wake.
He somehow found the strength to reach into his pocket and retrieve his quadtrol. It was his one and only hope. He managed to turn on the device and tried to hang on as it searched desperately for the ticket booth. He actually felt his heart leap as the screen indicated that it lay just "beyond the next door."
He spotted the only other door in the chamber and crawled over to it. Bullets still flying all over, he reached up to its handle, only to find it was locked. This took just about the last of his energy out of him. Never before had he felt so weak.
He didn't have enough strength to breathe, never mind try to get the door open. But then serendipity — or part of the program of this place. A fusillade of bullets went over his head and snapped the door neatly in two. One half of it fell away, the other half fell right on top of Hunter. Now it felt like three tons of concrete were pressing down on him, instead of just two.
He never stopped crawling, though. He made it inside the room and suddenly found himself staring up at a stereotypical ticket booth. Cramped interior. Fake wood. The PC sitting as always right in the middle. Hunter was losing blood and breath. He had no time to admire the strange location of the place. He dragged himself to the PC table, lifted himself up to it, and started the painful process of booting up. It took longer than usual — and all this was happening as the gun battle was drawing closer to the tiny room.
Finally he faced the last field. The one that asked about his hobby. He barely had the strength to type it in.
Then, with the last ounce of life in his body, he pushed the Enter button.
8
"Let me take care of that stain, sir…"
Hunter watched in dazed confusion as the girl in the very low-cut dress began wiping the blood from his chest.
There is nothing more exhilarating than getting shot at with no result. Someone famous had once said that. But at the moment Hunter was more stunned than exhilarated. It was dark. He was barely aware of his surroundings. One moment, he was pushing the Enter button on the old PC. The next, he was here — wherever here. was.
He tried his best to get his wits about him. He was seated at a wooden table, an old gas lamp burning dimly in front of him. He could hear choppy piano music rising behind him, its song boisterous and off key. But his vision was still blurry, and the oil lamp was doing him no good. He could just make out the pair of partially exposed breasts just inches in front of his face.
Am I dying — or not?
This was the only question on Hunter's mind.
He blinked his eyes, and when he opened them again, his vision began to clear. The woman in the low-cut dress was dressed like a saloon hall girl. She'd stuck the hem of her short black skirt into a glass of water and was wiping Hunter's shirt again.
"California red wine," she was saying. "Good thing it's cheap. It won't stain too much if you catch it in time."
Hunter looked down at the table again and saw a wineglass tipped over and a small pool of red wine in front of him. And some of it had splashed on him. In fact, the red stains coincided exactly with where he'd been shot just seconds earlier: up near his shoulder. On his chest. Down on his thigh.