“Jeremy, listen—”
“No. You listen!” Logan shouted against the roar of the storm. “That thing can’t be allowed to exist. Do you hear me? I’m going to make sure that weapon never sees the light of day — if it’s the last thing I do.”
Then he hung up.
Slipping the phone back into his pocket, he picked up the tarp again and stuffed it into the broken window. Then, plucking up the flashlight from where he’d placed it, he moved to the doorway, stepped through it, and closed the door behind him. Instantly, the sound of the storm grew muffled.
Almost the entire Lux faculty and staff had deserted the mansion ahead of the hurricane. This wing, he knew, would be utterly deserted.
Laura Benedict thought he was standing outside the East Wing. That meant time — if nothing else — was, for once, on his side.
But first he had to find his way back to more familiar ground. And, time or no time, he’d have to hurry: Benedict would already be on the phone again, rallying her men and telling them where to go. At least, he thought, that would take any heat off Kim. It was a calculated risk.
He shook the water off his shoes, squeezed the damp from his trousers. Then, pointing the flashlight ahead of him, Logan moved down the corridor, heading north in the direction of the West Wing’s entrance. He realized that, based on the height of the window through which he entered, he must be one floor below the main level. The hallway, which consisted of bare plaster walls, jogged left, then left again. Logan pushed away the pain in his leg and his head and tried as best he could to estimate his location by dead reckoning. Was he near the portal leading to the main building? Or was he lost somewhere in the maze of narrow corridors and rooms that filled the rest of the wing?
Ahead, the hallway ended at a circular metal staircase, its triangular rungs heavy with dust and the imprints of booted feet. Logan shone his light up the staircase, then climbed the treads carefully, one step at a time, dragging his injured leg behind him now. He stepped out into a side corridor that he didn’t recognize, full of timber and lath and the stacked detritus of demolition. Here he paused a moment to squeeze the blood and water from the improvised dressing, then reapply it to the gunshot graze across his thigh. And then he moved forward again.
Following the narrow corridor, flashlight beam licking over the walls and ceiling, he emerged shortly into a wider space. This he immediately recognized: to his left was the staircase leading up to the second floor, and the jumble of intersecting rooms that lay beyond. In the distance, he could see the dark bulk of the nearest standing stone: a silent, grim sentinel in this ghostly, echoing place.
He switched off the flashlight for a moment and stood motionless in the darkness, listening. All was silent, save the moan of the storm as it beat against the building’s exterior. It was too soon for Benedict’s goons to be upon him — but it would not take them long. He had to hurry.
Making his way up the staircase — glancing behind to make sure he was leaving no trail of blood or rainwater — he slipped past the ruined offices, piles of plaster rubble, and half-destroyed walls, following the path by memory, until he reached the vague outline of Strachey’s shadow-haunted lateral corridor A. Turning down it, shining the flashlight ahead of him, he advanced until he reached the improvised HAZARDOUS AREA sign and the tarp barrier that lay beyond.
He paused another moment to reconnoiter and listen. Then he moved past the sign, ducked through the hole he’d made in the tarp barrier — had it really been less than two weeks before? — and entered the forgotten room.
He knew the room had been wired for electricity, but he did not turn on the light switch. Instead, he used the flashlight to get his bearings one more time: the Machine; its various controls; the heavy armorlike suits that hung from the rear wall. He noticed that the strange, elevator-like device remained corkscrewed into position on the third floor, its base flush with the ceiling.
Good.
In the close, listening silence of the West Wing, he now began to make out the faint sound of voices.
Quickly, he turned toward the rack of metal suits. He found himself recalling the long days he’d spent here; now he was angry at himself for never trying on one of the suits, familiarizing himself with their operation.
He moved the beam of his flashlight over the row of bulky garments, quickly selecting one that seemed like his size. Then — placing his light on a nearby shelf — he unhooked the suit from its tether and lifted it down.
He was surprised by how heavy it was. It seemed to be constructed of a single, unibody design, and for a sickening minute he could not figure out how it was meant to be put on. Then he noticed a series of hooks and grommets — flush with the suit and almost invisible if one didn’t know where to look — that extended in a long line from beneath the right armpit to the hip. As quickly as he could, his cold and wet fingers fumbling stupidly, he undid the fastenings. The seam was padded and reinforced on the inside by felt and leather. He pulled the knife he’d obtained from the old kitchen out of his waistband and let it drop to the floor. Pulling the suit wide, he took off his shoes, and then, raising his hurt leg gingerly, began to slip into it.
The fit was very tight, and the built-in metal slippers that served as shoes hurt his feet, but there was no time to search for a more comfortable replacement. He slipped his arms into the metal sleeves, pushed his fingers into the flexible, accordion-like metal fins of the gloves. Thank God: they, at least, fit.
Leaving the helmet dangling from the neckpiece, he pushed the protective felt back into place, then began fastening, as quickly as he could, the hook-and-grommet arrangement that sealed the suit. With his fingers in the heavy gloves, this proved even harder than undoing the fasteners had been.
The voices grew louder. They were still indistinct, but one of them, he now realized, was that of a woman. She did most of the speaking, as if giving directions.
Of course. Benedict knew the way into the room far better than he did. She would want to get her men into position, ready for the ambush, as far in advance of his arrival as possible.
Buckling the last grommet, Logan stepped forward. Walking was awkward and it took him several steps to get his balance. Grabbing the flashlight and playing it over the Machine, he found the primary switches set into the side of its central housing. He bent stiffly over them, curling the fingers of one glove around the power switch; he snapped it on; waited several seconds; then engaged the load switch.
Softly, almost below the threshold of hearing, as if more sensation than sound, the Machine began to hum.
Now Logan could hear footsteps overhead. It was as he’d hoped: Benedict would have her men approach via the weight-actuated spiral elevator, the method she no doubt had always used to enter the secret room herself. The voices were louder now, and he could make out her words.
“Close the retaining doors,” came her muffled voice. “Then give the winch on the other side, there, a clockwise turn. One turn will be enough.”
“You’re not coming?” returned a masculine voice — one Logan recognized from his pursuit in the mansion’s basement.
“I’ll wait up here.”
More shuffling of feet; a hollow boom; then an odd creaking noise.
Logan retreated to the front panel of the Machine, where the operating controls were located. He ducked down, so that he would be less visible. The elevator, he knew, would spiral to a spot directly in front of the Machine — and its doors would open to face him.