Aegis Incursion (19 page)

The drilling sound was coming from a door to her right. Tegan carefully guided the mouse forward, hoping that Elvis, engrossed in his magazine with one hand digging into a bowl of potato chips, wouldn’t notice her. She could hear the crunching from his mouth as he shoved in a handful at a time.

Tegan made her way past the table and saw another door looming ahead. She skittered toward it but halted when she heard the crunching of chips stop. She turned and saw Elvis staring at her with eyes as wide as full moons. Then, with a Tarzan-like yell, he hurled his magazine at her.

The mouse squeaked in alarm and everything seemed to slow down. As the magazine neared, Tegan saw a fearsome machine on the front cover with the name
Devastator
emblazoned on its hood. Then the magazine hit her, sending the mouse skidding. Not needing further prompting, Tegan wiggled through the narrow crack under the door and fled to the other side.

She halted. A plethora of sounds and smells hit her ears and nose all at once. The intimidating noises initially frightened her, but she eventually got used to them. The mouse looked around, sniffing. There was a lot of dust hanging in the air. The sounds of construction equipment at work filled her ears, as did distant yelling. There were large mounds of dirt and rock, as well as tall piles of building materials.
Good hiding spots
, Tegan thought.

She scurried around, taking in as much as she could. As far as she could gather, she was inside some kind of a massive cavern. Buildings were being erected in several locations within the enormous space with bright lights illuminating each work site. Dozens of workers in orange coveralls and white hardhats were drilling, laying down pipes and digging trenches. The closer she looked at the men and women working, though, the clearer it became to her that most of them were merely teenagers around her age. It appeared odd to Tegan, but she had a more pressing objective to attend to.

She quickly darted under some wooden pallets when a worker shuffled by, carrying a wrench in one hand. She stared after him.
What are they working on down here?

Once the worker was out of sight, she darted around a mound of dirt and came face-to-face with a steel building. A sign on the door read ‘DANGER! DO NOT ENTER!’ She would have walked right past it if not for the intimidating scent traces around the structure, and the rippling snarl that emanated from within.

An ice-cold finger ran down her spine. There was something disturbingly familiar about the snarl. A chilling image began to surface in her mind but she shoved it away before it could come fully to light. She scampered away, mapping the area and committing the layout of the site to memory.

She traversed gravel roads used by huge trucks loaded with dirt or construction material. To her left she noticed a large tunnel that seemed to be the main conduit to the outside. It was busy with traffic flowing in and out of the cave.

Too much activity here,
Tegan decided.
We wouldn’t even take one step in and we’d be caught.

She had gone nearly half a mile eastward when she came upon two buildings. One was in mid-construction while the other was nearly complete. A sign mounted on the wall of the finished structure indicated that it was a hydroponic farm. She continued east until she stood across from a large blue building. The sign on it read ‘Water Treatment & Storage’. Sitting still for a moment, she wondered,
Where’s the water coming from?

She walked around the water treatment plant and noticed a smaller concrete edifice, about twenty feet wide and just as long, with the words ‘Hydro-Power Generator’ painted in green on a steel door. She noticed a large steel pipe leading into it from a small, dimly lit tunnel thirty feet away. Curious, she followed the pipe into the tunnel. Inside, she scurried up a gradual slope for several minutes before reaching a dead end as the pipe disappeared into a rock wall at the end of the tunnel.

Oh, come on! Don’t tell me I’ve hit an impasse!

As she anxiously searched for an exit, her eyes fell upon a narrow opening in the roof of the tunnel. She peered up into the vertical shaft and saw a metal ladder bolted to the wall. It was partially extended and a few rungs reached partway down into the main tunnel. Her gaze followed the ladder into the opening, which ended in a flat circle some ways up.

It took Tegan a few moments to realize that she was looking up at a manhole, some kind of a service access to the water supply tunnel. The mouse’s body started to shake in excitement.
A way out! Yes!

She turned around and hurried back down the tunnel. As she ran back toward the storage room, she wondered how she and Mariah would slip past all the workers and the traffic while crossing nearly a quarter mile of cavern.

As long as there’s a way,
she told herself firmly,
we’ll find the means to make it out.

M
ariah had been pacing back and forth, looking over at Tegan every once in a while only to see her friend still in a meditative state. It was agonizingly quiet inside the storage room, and lonely. Tegan may have been there in body, but not in mind. Heaving a sigh, Mariah continued her little restless march.

She heard a squeak a few minutes later and looked down. The pocket mouse was wriggling under the door. When it got its rear through, it stopped moving for a couple of seconds. A deep intake of breath signaled that Tegan had ended her mindlink with the creature. The mouse scampered to hide behind one of the boxes in the room.

Mariah hurried over to Tegan and knelt beside her. “What was it? What did you see? Did you find a way out?”

Tegan looked up at her, blinking several times, then grinned. “Sure did. We’re gonna have to plan this carefully.”

“Why? Where are we?”

“I think we’re underground in a cave. It’s huge and there’s a lot of construction going on . . . It’s strange, though. Most of the workers seem to be teenagers.”

“Huh?”

“It’s weird, I know. I’m not sure what’s going on.”

Mariah rubbed her arms. “Forget that, then. How do we escape?”

Tegan pushed herself up and pressed her ear against the door for a few moments, a finger to her lips. Then, looking reassured, she went back to Mariah. “There’s a guy out there,” she said softly. “He’s got an Elvis hairdo going. Guess he’s supposed to be guarding us.”

“So what do we do?” Mariah asked.

“Let me explain the layout first. On the other side of the door there’s an office with a small pantry. There’s a long table that Elvis is sitting at. Past that, there’s another door that leads out to the construction area. There’s a network of gravel roads and huge mounds of dirt, rocks, stacks of pipes and building material. We’ll have to hide behind those while we make our way through.”

“There’s a main tunnel not far from here that I think leads to the surface, but we can’t use it because there’s heavy traffic. Unfortunately we’re gonna have to cross a road connected to that tunnel to escape.”

Mariah was hopeful. “Escape?”

“Yeah. There’s a smaller tunnel with a pipe that supplies water from the surface to this site. I found a manhole at the end of the tunnel—I’m hoping it’ll lead us out.”

Courage and anticipation surged through Mariah. “Perfect. This is good . . . really good. But how do we get past the guard?”

Tegan winked. “That’s where you come in.”

“Me?”

“I’m gonna yell out that I need to use the bathroom. Hopefully he buys that and responds. When he does, you need to be quick. There’s a toaster on the pantry counter. Use it to knock him out.”

“You know I’ll need line of sight to the object to do that, right?”

“I know.”

Mariah stretched out her arms in preparation. “Okay, let’s do this.”

“Gimme a second.” Tegan went behind one of the boxes and bent down to pick something up.

When she returned, Mariah groaned. “Are you serious? You’re gonna bring the mouse with us?”

“Of course I am. He was such a great help, and may still be later.” Tegan held up the mouse proudly so it was just inches from Mariah’s face. “And I think I’ll name him Devastator.”

The mouse looked from Mariah to Tegan, looking for all the world as if it were smiling at them. Mariah, although obviously far from fond of rodents, couldn’t deny that the tiny, furry creature was indeed adorable.

As Tegan helped Mariah to her feet, Mariah asked, “Why Devastator?”

“Elvis tried to hit him earlier with his monster truck magazine. One of the trucks on the cover of that magazine was called
Devastator
and that was the last image I saw before scooting outta there.”

Mariah lifted an eyebrow and smiled slightly, then nodded at Tegan to kick off their plan. Tegan slid the mouse into her shirt pocket, then went up to the door and banged her fist against it. “Hey! I need to use the bathroom!”

When nothing happened, Tegan tried again. “Come on, for heaven’s sake! I really gotta use the bathroom! Can anyone hear me?
Hey!
”

The door buzzed and opened so suddenly that Tegan jumped back in surprise.

Mariah took stock of the man in the doorway. Tegan was right; he really did look like an orange-haired Elvis.
Those sideburns are a sin, though,
she thought with distaste.

Elvis glared at the girls. “What do you want?” He sounded Australian, much to the pair’s surprise.

Tegan glared back at him. “Bathroom.”

“You can hold it in.”

“I really need to go.”

“Too bad.”

“But I really need to go!”

“Not my problem.”

“Tony didn’t say anything about denying us the bathroom,” Tegan snapped.

While they were arguing, Mariah was trying to look past Elvis to locate the toaster.
This oaf needs to move his fat head,
she seethed.

“Fine,” Elvis growled. He pointed at Mariah. “You. Stand back. Back of the room. Further. No, further. Back against the wall. There you go.”

Mariah snorted but complied, and was glad she did. She could now see half of a microwave oven on a counter some ways behind Elvis. It wasn’t going to be as easy as a toaster, but she’d have to make it work. Focusing, she saw the appliance begin to shake for a few seconds before its cord was yanked from an outlet and it careened through the air.

There was a dull but painful-sounding thud when the microwave hit the back of Elvis’s head before falling to the floor with a loud clang. Elvis swayed as if drunk and then tipped forward into the storage room. Tegan quickly sidestepped as the man came crashing onto the concrete floor and lay there, out cold.

“I said toaster, but a microwave’ll do too—ten points to Gryffindor! Let’s go!” Tegan ran over Elvis, Mariah on her heels. The girls cautiously opened the same door the mouse had earlier slipped under and peeked out. Seeing that the coast was clear, they sprinted to the first rock mound. Mariah hoped Tegan remembered which way to go.

The clamor of drilling was the most noticeable sound. This end of the cavern was dimly lit, but Mariah could see a glow from work lights in isolated sections of the construction area. The girls had to take care not to trip over equipment as they cautiously avoided workers, dump trucks and Bobcats moving around the site.

They ran past a fair-sized steel building to their left. Something about it seemed vaguely familiar to Mariah. The ‘Danger! Do Not Enter!’ notice on the door gave her a chill and she was glad when they were past it.

The two went from mound-to mound swiftly, crouching so as not to be seen. “What are we gonna do if Tony’s around here somewhere?” Mariah asked.

“I’m gonna take one of those pipes over there and hit him with it,” Tegan replied flatly.

“Sound plan. I like it.”

They snuck past a pile of two-by-four lumber but quickly had to dance back around it to avoid being seen by a young man in orange coveralls hauling a wheelbarrow filled with bricks along a path next to a dirt road. Once he had passed, they darted over the path to the next stack of lumber.

“This place is so huge,” Mariah whispered. “Why? What are they doing down here?”

“Don’t know, and right now, really don’t care.” Tegan peeked around the stack. “Okay, main road is up ahead. Looks clear right now, except for a couple of guys walking away from us. Remember, quick and stealthy.”

The girls ran across the gravel road, eyes shifting rapidly between the main tunnel and a pair of workers walking ahead of them. They had just crossed the road when someone thundered in an Australian accent, “Stop those two!”

The workers ahead of the girls stopped and turned around. At first they appeared confused, but when the shout was repeated they sprinted toward the escaping pair.

The girls spun around to make a break for it in the other direction but found their way blocked by Elvis. The man looked as angry as a bull. He had fresh scrapes on his nose and cheek.

Before either Mariah or Tegan could move again they were grabbed from behind. They struggled indignantly but were shoved roughly to their knees.

“You two’ve got some guts,” Elvis said, his fingers extending as if they were claws that he wanted to dig into the girls’ faces. “You’re a right pain in the arse, you are. Tony would have slain me if you’d escaped.”

The pair kept their mouths firmly shut, but gave loathing, spiteful looks up at the man.

“You’re lucky I saw you runnin’ off, else I would’ve been forced to use a more
drastic
method to find you.” Elvis observed them disdainfully. “Who helped you? Who hit me? I know someone around here must have helped you. Tell me who it was.” When the girls didn’t answer, he drew himself to his full height. “Fine, don’t speak. We’ll find the tosser, and we’ll make sure to take very good care of him.”

Mariah angled her gaze at the dirt.

“Did you really think you could get away so easily?” Elvis asked, sneering. “Where were you plannin’ to go?”

Instinctively, both girls glanced at the main tunnel. Elvis saw them and guffawed. “You were hoping to go through there? I should’ve just left you to it—wouldn’t have been able to go more than two steps before getting caught, you wouldn’t.”

Oaf,
Mariah thought.