The Neo-Spartans: Altered World (16 page)

              “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hit you that hard,” said Quinn, but Nico held her hand still, sending little electrical shocks through her. She tried to pull it away, but he didn’t let her. Instead he used it to pull himself to his feet.

              “Never apologize for a hit in a fight. I’m the ass that fell asleep and let himself get smacked down by–”

              “Uh-uh, call me a little girl again and I’ll hit you for real this time.”

              The flash of anger in her eyes made Nico smile again. What was with him today? If he weren’t careful his face might freeze in a permanent grin.

              “I wasn’t going to say that. I got smacked down by a clever opponent. You figured out my game and beat me with it. Very smart.”

              They left the fighting circle but neither was eager to leave. Nico threw Quinn a towel and they sat down at the bench and shared a bottle of water.

              “See, I wasn’t lying when I said I could go for another.”

              Nico cleaned the blood from his nose. “I do see now. You’re good, really good. Keep it up and I’ll put you in a big fight.”

              “A big fight?”

              “Yeah, show time in the big arena. Bigwigs, big bets, winner takes all, that kinda thing. What the heck did you think we do this for?”

Quinn looked at him sheepishly. “For fun.”

              “Fun’s always better when it’s backed up by money. Besides, we have to fund our operation somehow. So if I put you in a big fight you’ll get a chance to earn me the big bucks my sister promised you would.”

              Quinn shook off the troublesome thoughts that flooded her head. The Vaqueros were gladiators. Big money for the winner. What about the loser? She tried to stay focused and show her enthusiasm. “That’s amazing! I can’t wait.” She hoped Nico hadn’t heard the strain in her voice. He looked out toward the big arena. He was probably picturing the fight. She couldn’t tell. But when he looked at her again, the seriousness had returned.

              “Just make sure what you just showed me is real. Don’t make me regret I took you in, okay?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

              Quinn had to discover where Gabriel was being kept and why. Without a location she’d never be able to deliver Kilbert the recon he needed to rescue him. Slinking noiselessly through the sticky molasses of the night, following her inner compass, Quinn moved through the labyrinth of alleys that led to the wall. She was jumpy and saw shadows lurk around every corner. She stopped and checked, then double checked. Nothing. Just the pitch black night. It made her progress slow and Quinn knew she had to shake off the fear and pick up her pace. She had to find her food supplies, then blindly scout the Sanctuary. With any luck she’d at least get the lay of the land, and maybe a clue or two where Gabriel might be.

              She waited for her eyes to get accustomed to the dark; perhaps if the thick darkness dissipated a little, her doubt that she’d never find the phantom place where Gabriel was being kept would lift too. But it didn’t. Quinn walked blindly, the vague delineations of the buildings emerging from the amorphous blackness at the last instant, startling her. The ancients must have felt this way at night, full of dread of things unseen that might jump at them at the last moment. But maybe not. They had the stars back then. Big and bright. Now, there was nothing. Just a thick curtain of smog. Back in the city it reflected the cool neon lights, illuminating the night in lime green hues. Here, there was nothing to reflect. The Sanctuary shut off power at sundown. It was too expensive to keep the generators going. Sporadic trash barrel fires flickered on and off like fireflies but they were not enough to shear the complete darkness that engulfed this place.

              The hunger in Quinn’s belly pushed away the daunting task of figuring out where her brother was, and pushed her forward to the wall. She groped around, feeling the crumbling cement with her hands until she found the crevice that Marisol had used to pop in and out of the Sanctuary. Quinn squeezed through it and searched under the loose concrete for her backpack. She ransacked in the dark and finally her hands came across the precious worn out fabric. She feverishly unzipped the bag and grabbed the paper wrapped beef jerky, together with some other packs of dried fruits and veggies. Quinn bit into the food with wolfish appetite. She gulped it down in no time, probably eating more than her daily ration, but right now all she could listen to was her rumbling stomach. When she finished, she went through the remaining contents of her backpack and pulled out a leather pouch. Her Neo-Spartan first-aid kit. It contained herbal extracts and dried roots as organic and ancient as the Earth itself. They would fix any GM food poisoning and give one energy if one were starved. Kilbert had made everybody carry these pouches no matter where they went. Quinn clutched the pouch in her hand, thankful for Kilbert’s shrewdness. She carefully fastened it to her belt, shoved a pack of nuts in her pants pocket and hid the backpack where she found it.

              She squeezed through the opening back into the Sanctuary, and quickened her pace and brain in an effort to extract anything useful out of the pitch black surroundings that might lead her to her brother. She started for the center of this modern day Babylon, a jumble of streets and alleys jam-packed on a daily basis with crazy crowds who took their surroundings for granted and paid attention to nothing but their crazy stunts.

              Her mind raced with curiosity. Why would Bangers take him? Were they recruiting? Was he drafted? She couldn’t wrap her head around it as she crisscrossed neighborhoods with hunched over dwellings and blocks of abandoned industrial structures. With the intention of exploring the property for clues, she jumped over a crumbling brick fence into what must have been a factory yard, but she landed on something soft that almost tripped her, and before she knew it the soft shape moved and jumped up at her. A filthy ugly face snarled with a foul breath, forcing Quinn a few steps back. His rumbling curses awoke more shapes that moved in the dark and headed for the unwanted intruder. Quinn must have crashed some bums’ encampment but there was no time for excuses or explanations. The beings whose sleep she had disturbed were not in the mood for understanding. Like an army of zombies they lurched at her and running on instinct, Quinn scrambled over the fence and sprinted down the dark streets.

              Escape, the only thing on her mind, moved Quinn through the maze of the Sanctuary and by the time she had put some distance between her and the pack of smelly shapes she had no idea where she was or how to get back to the arena. She quieted her heart beat and listened. If you can’t rely on one sense another will give you a helping hand. It was astounding how permanently imprinted Kilbert’s words were.

              That’s right, don’t panic, just listen. Quinn didn’t have to wait long. Soon, her fine-tuned hearing detected the distant whirr of an approaching car. It was several blocks away but Quinn could tell it was headed in her general direction. Good. Car meant headlights, which meant visibility. Her ears pricked, Quinn started moving toward the whirr. Moments later, cool, yellowish beams licked the corners of a building, bounced off a puddle in the road and briefly hit a thick cement structure. The noise grew stronger, and Quinn ducked behind a rusty dumpster just as the vehicle turned into the street where she was. Her mind was still working on the fragments she had just seen when it had to jump again on the new piece of information that presented itself.

              The vehicle she saw from her hiding place was a black van—and it had been a black van that Lucas had reported seeing when Gabriel was abducted. Quinn slinked from behind the dumpster and ran along the curb, trying not to lose sight of it. With no time to study the surroundings, she pushed herself to the limit. The road started sloping downwards and Quinn noticed that as it went down, cement walls flanked it on both sides and grew taller as she proceeded. She must have entered some kind of tunnel. Excitement that she might be on the right track, and fear that she might be getting into something really dangerous, made her heart pound.

              The van picked up speed and disappeared into the dark void of the tunnel. She could still see the meager illumination from the van’s headlights bouncing off the walls a few hundred yards ahead. But it vanished. Sure that she had nothing but open road ahead, she sprinted again, but suddenly came upon a massive iron door with a lone dim bulb above it. Quinn surveyed it quickly and even in the murky light she could tell that it was huge and impregnable and whatever lay behind it was carefully guarded by a lot of money and resources. She had no doubt this was the key to finding her brother—and that there was no way she could penetrate it. She started back up the tunnel, intent on committing the location to memory and exploring it at a different time of day when she wasn’t as blind as a bat.

              She was still a hundred yards deep into the mysterious tunnel when she heard the iron door behind her open and the sound of another vehicle. She dashed toward the tunnel entrance, but head lights swept across her and she realized that she’d never get out of the tunnel before this new vehicle overtook her. She knew she mustn’t been seen—that whoever put this tunnel here wouldn’t be happy to see her. She dashed ahead and plastered herself behind a support pillar as the vehicle whizzed past. As it did she sneaked a look and was amazed to recognize the car and its driver. It was Robert, Celeste’s husband, in that distinctive late model car with the dual exhausts, and the license plate: LITIG8.

              Quinn pulled herself together and started up again, but as she was close to reaching street level, she heard a heavy reverberating sound that suggested metal grating against something hard and solid. That sound did not bode well, and she sprinted the last thirty yards only to find a gnarly looking grill dropping into place to close access to the tunnel. It was already only a couple feet away from locking into place and the panic of being trapped in here rocketed Quinn into action. She dived under the grill and tried to roll away as its spikes slammed down with an ominous thud. The ripping pain of torn flesh came as a shock and the image of being impaled by the spikes flitted across Quinn’s brain. When she gathered her wits again, she noticed to her relief that she had made it, yet she was unable to move. Quinn tried to stand up but the ripping pain tugged at her flesh and she gritted her teeth in agony. She reached down with her hand to locate the source of the pain. One of the spikes had gone through her pant leg and the skin of her thigh, pinning her to the ground. Despite the horrendous pain, Quinn could tell there was no muscle damage and for the first time in her life she considered herself lucky. She took a couple of deep breaths, bit into the sleeve of her jacket and jerked away her leg with all her might. Skin and cloth tore away from the grill and she buried the agonized scream in her arm.

              Quinn knew she’d found something significant, and she wasn’t going to let pain keep her from exploring further. Adrenalin drove her through the streets of the Sanctuary and out of Marisol’s crevice, and the monorail took her to Grand View Heights. She forced her injured leg to pump all the way to Celeste DiPietro’s house. Sure enough, there was Robert’s fancy car in the driveway. She felt the heat coming off the hood. She shimmied up a drain pipe to what she knew was Celeste’s bedroom, knocked on the window. Inside, a surprised Celeste awoke and pulled on a robe.

              Moments later, Celeste let Quinn through the kitchen door. As Celeste applied iodine and bandages to Quinn’s wound, Quinn quietly explained her unusually ragged clothing and the layer of Sanctuary on her skin. In whispers, she related how Gabriel had disappeared, how she’d penetrated the Sanctuary, joined with the Vaqueros, and while searching for him, discovered the mysterious tunnel… and Robert’s presence there.

              With each detail, an expression Quinn had never seen developed on Celeste’s usually benign features, cold and morose, full of fear and fury.

              “The bastards,” she uttered under her breath.

              Quinn stared in shock as Celeste got up and paced, not sure where to turn or how to proceed.

              “You know that Robert is a lawyer for the Hughes Corporation. Some months ago he came home and told me that there’d been a breakthrough. They have a secret laboratory in the Sanctuary in an abandoned factory.”

              “In the Sanctuary?” said Quinn incredulously.

              “Yes, an area nobody would ever suspect. They call it the Citadel.” She paused and looked back at the moment in her mind. “I should have known. The way he said it. He couldn’t even look me in the eye. He had to have a scotch before he could tell me.”

              “Celeste, what did he say? What does this have to do with Gabriel?” asked Quinn.