“So how would I contact you with it?” Michelle asked.
“Touch it and say the name of the person you want to talk to,” Blake explained. “Our biometrics are stored in the Maze, and when you put on that shirt or anything else from the dressing room, it reads who you are so it knows you’re Michelle in the same way it knows me and Perry. If Perry or I were to contact you, it will emit a single beep and no more. To accept, you just have to touch it and say something. From there, we have a two-way conversation. Just consider carefully before using it.”
A low rumble sounded from some distance outside the building. The three of them looked at each other, concerned, which confirmed that they had all heard it. Another rumble sounded even closer followed by another which sent debris flying against the windows of the room.
“Are we under attack?” Perry asked.
“It would appear so,” Blake said. Hector ran into the room and gestured quickly for them to follow him as the next blast shattered the windows, littered the floor with debris, and filled the air with dust. The trio fell to the floor from the concussion, but jumped back to their feet to follow Hector who ran down the hall.
Michelle led the trio behind Hector followed closely by Blake and Perry. The blasts sounded from all around the perimeter of the building, rattling its foundations.
“What’s going on?” Michelle called out to Hector.
“Your friend, Major Halloway, isn’t too keen on us being here,” Hector called back. “We have an escape route. We’ll be ok.”
As if in response to Hector’s confidence, a blast destroyed the wall next to them throwing all four of them to the floor. Debris from the blast buried them, and the last thing that Blake saw was a military force of about fifteen soldiers outside the building running toward them.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When Blake regained consciousness, he was resting in a darkened room that felt cool and humid enough for it to be underground. The walls were crumbling concrete, and he was sitting on an uneven concrete floor that was very cold. He looked around in the dim light to find Perry and Hector both still unconscious, but no Michelle. He wanted to remain positive and believe that she might be in a different room or had awakened first, rather than accept any of the alternatives.
He tried to rise to his feet, but a groan later, he found his legs were not quite revived yet. He sank back to the floor with his back against the wall, and took a few deep breaths to gather himself. Concussion blasts always took the wind right out of him, and he was grateful that the outside wall of the old building had absorbed most of the force of the explosion or they would have been in real trouble. He needed answers, and he hoped to find them outside the doorway he spotted once the fog of unconsciousness had lifted.
He curled his legs under him, rose to his knees, and turned around to support himself against the wall with both hands. With a groan, he climbed to his feet, turned his back to the wall, and leaned against it, breathing heavily from the unusual effort this took. He closed his eyes to summon his strength and came off the wall to take a few unsteady steps allowing the blood to flow through his legs again.
Gathering his strength, he brushed the dust residue off his clothes and then stepped over to Perry, still unconscious against the wall much as Blake had been originally. He knelt beside Perry and felt for his pulse. It was good and strong, so he decided to let Perry rest further while he found out where they were and what had happened to Michelle.
He moved through the doorway to a long hallway with only a handful of dim lights along the length of the ceiling. The design was so basic that the wires for the electricity were visible and branched off a central line to the lights and to one of the rooms. As he crept down the hall towards the lit room, he heard the soft babble of two men echoing off its walls. He recognized one of the voices as Gerard as the leader of this faction spoke with another man that Blake had not yet met.
“It’s ridiculous to think these two could do anything more than anyone else has,” the other man said.
“Sometimes, it’s less about possibility and more about willingness,” Gerard said.
“But who are they working for?”
“I don’t know.” Gerard sounded like he had already answered this question from his extremely suspicious companion more than once.
“How do you know they didn’t bring Halloway’s forces down on us?”
“I don’t.”
“They could be leading us into a trap. Do you really believe they accidentally found themselves in Carburast? Do you think they spent as long as they said in there without disappearing? Think about it. That kind of stuff is fantasy. Completely impossible.”
“I know it’s impossible, but when I spoke to them, I knew they weren’t from around here. They don’t dress like us. They don’t talk like us.”
“So they’ve been coached or something.”
“It’s more than that, Dorin. They look like us, but I just know they aren’t.”
“Our scientists have determined we’re the only intelligent life in the universe. Even if there were other peoples out there, they’d be so far away that we would never meet them. Aliens are the stuff of fiction. These people are just from somewhere else in Pilkrand or some other country, maybe, but they’re from planet Keersh, make no mistake about it. Our moon has no life, and the other two planets in our system are also quite dead. Lots of rock and no air. Now enough of these fanciful games. Can we not find out what they want?”
Gerard’s friend, Dorin, was about six feet tall and looked like a grizzled man in his forties who has seen much in a life that has not gone his way. His face remained in a constant state of suspicion, so Blake knew he would be difficult to win over, though Gerard was making a valiant effort. Dorin’s assertions amused Blake, of course, as an alien to their world who did come across a very long distance to be here, and while part of him wanted to engage Dorin in an interstellar discussion, it would accomplish nothing. He did feel it time, however, to interrupt them to find out about Michelle.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” Blake said, walking into the room. Dorin looked up in surprise, his eyes narrowing in suspicion. “First, I’d like to thank you for bringing us to safety, but I do need to ask where our female companion ended up.”
“How long have you been listening?” Dorin asked.
“Long enough to know you don’t trust me,” Blake said, “which is fine because in your position, I wouldn’t trust me either. But trust or not, I still think my question is a fair one.”
“Suppose we don’t tell you,” Dorin said.
“Dorin, let’s not be crass,” Gerard said. He took a deep breath and looked at Blake. “Blake, I’m sorry, but your friend, Michelle, was taken by Major Halloway. When the explosion took out the wall of Point Light’s city hall, Dorin and I had just reached the edge of that corridor. We pulled you and Perry out of the rubble, but didn’t immediately see Michelle with you. Once I realized that one of you was missing, it was too late to check.”
Blake felt his stomach drop while Gerard was talking. He closed his eyes and shook his head. As a general rule, he preferred to keep the other travelers of the Maze close together, but he also knew that if they were intended to return to the Maze once their mission was complete, they would be together, or the Maze would give them their own way out. Of course, this was Michelle‘s first time, so she would not know this, and she would not be as prepared as he or Perry to deal with other races or know how much she could say. This is not to say the Maze was to be kept secret, but allowing others to know that you have a method of travel that can circumvent every ounce of security they might have tended to make those in charge a bit edgy. And Halloway certainly seemed like the edgy type. He looked back at Gerard.
“Where are we now then?” Blake asked.
“Don’t tell him,” Dorin insisted.
“We’re in a secret passage under the municipal building,” Gerard replied, ignoring both Dorin’s insistence and his subsequent scoff. “It was put in a
s part of the original construction as a way out in case of attack. The building is so old most people have forgotten about it. We stumbled across it months ago.”
“We have to get her back,” Blake said.
“We have to finish this first,” Gerard said.
“Finish what?” Blake asked.
“The power plant,” Gerard said. “I told you about it earlier.” Blake figured he would say this. The man was hiding his desperation, but not very well. “I promise to help you get her back, but I cannot have that take precedence over freeing Carburast.”
“You know, this power plant idea may not work,” Blake warned.
“I don’t know that for sure,” Gerard said, “and neither do you.” Blake nodded since if Gerard had never tried it or known of anyone who had, it certainly seemed like a logical option. When he also considered Gerard’s opinion that the people in charge wanted to keep Carburast locked down, it would certainly seem like they would keep the plant under their control.
“You see how he is working against you already?” Dorin asked, ignoring the irony that by trying to work against Blake, he was also working against Gerard’s plan.
“That is enough,” Gerard said. “I welcome others’ ideas, not this idle arguing. We have to do this.”
“Why haven’t you tried it before?” Blake asked. “If this town has been in this predicament for ten years, why wait for someone to come in and do it for you?”
Blake heard someone shuffle up behind him. He turned to find Perry standing with him looking a bit worse for wear. “Are you all right?” Blake asked.
“I think so,” Perry said. “I’m a little sore, but I’ll live. Where’s Michelle?”
“Apparently, our friend, Halloway, has her,” Blake answered.
“You think she’ll be all right?” Perry asked.
“Couldn’t say,” Blake replied. “My biggest fear is her describing the Maze to Halloway. He can’t do anything with the information, but a man in his position will fear something like that.” Perry nodded.
“What is this Maze?” Gerard asked. “Why would Halloway fear such a thing?”
“It’s not important,” Blake said. “What is important is why you think we can do something now that you couldn’t before.”
“Just the way you talk, I guess,” Gerard said. “There aren’t many of us that have held onto hope this long. A lot of the people who started out with us have given up. I lived in Carburast with my wife and son, and I had to go out of town for a day leaving them in there. I believe they’re still there, and I hold onto that every day. Supposedly while I’ve been out here, they’ve stayed the same, and I want to see them before I get too old to see my boy grow up.”
“Then why haven’t you gone in there and shut it down before?” Perry asked.
“Well,” Gerard shrugged, “for one, there aren’t many of us, and that building is very heavily guarded.”
“While security has its weak points, Perry and I don’t exactly make an army,” Blake said. Gerard nodded.
“For another thing, I don’t really know how to shut it down,” Gerard admitted. He was staring at the ground as he spoke, but once he finished, he looked up at Blake to see his reaction. Blake stared at him for a moment, not sure what to think. He finally looked away in thought wondering how he should handle this little problem. Gerard was suggesting they move blindly into a power plant, and without any knowledge of its inner workings, shut it down. It could work a thousand different ways. The Guide had seen power stations before, of course, but their capacity to be turned on and off was fully dependant on how they produced their power. He wondered whether in the heat of what would almost certainly be a chase he would have the presence of mind to be able to sort out an entire control room of switches to find the proper way to power down something that significant. A power plant would not have a simple on/off switch. It would have safeguards and redundancies, and if it powered a city, they would have to override all of those to power everything off.
“Do you have anyone who knows how it works?” Blake asked. Gerard shook his head.
“If I had, I would have gone a long time ago,” Gerard replied.
“Well,” Blake sighed, “I supposed you’ll have to take me to it, so I can at least see if the design is familiar. Sometimes we get lucky that way.”
“Familiar in what way,” Dorin asked. “It’s a standard solar atmospheric plant, like everywhere else in the world.”
“Solar atmospheric?” Perry asked.
“What kind of idiots are you?” Dorin started, but Gerard held up a hand.
“The kind that is aware that your plant actively collects both sunlight and atmospheric energy to distribute it usually via cable,” Blake said. He actually just guessed based on the description their skeptical friend gave, but he was grateful to see Dorin simply nod and give a grumble indicating that he was correct in this assessment. There were only so many ways to produce electricity, and using the sun along with atmospheric electricity was one of the more common among the planets he had visited.
“So you know it?” Gerard asked.
“Hard to say,” Blake said. “Designs can vary widely. As I said, I’ll need to see it, and even then, I won’t know till I get next to the controls.”
“And there is the hard part,” Dorin said. “Surely you can figure out the other reason that no one has tried this before.”
“You mentioned that it’s guarded?” Blake asked.
“You would think it’s housing the nation’s treasury,” Dorin said. “Why else would it have a company of soldiers stationed there?”
Blake shrugged, not knowing what else to do with that. “I’ll still just have to see it,” he said.
“Are you ready now?” Gerard asked. Blake glanced to Perry who nodded.
“Let’s go,” Blake said.
Before they left, Gerard checked on Hector. He remained unconscious for now, but he would recover. Dorin insisted on accompanying Gerard, and so the four of them walked past the cluster of rooms into the endless, dimly lit hallway.
Before long, only the sounds of their footsteps broke the eerie silence that only existed underground. As they got further from their starting point, the overhead lights turned to simple marker lights like movie theaters have in their aisles placed close enough to spot the next one, but not so close that they did not pass through patches of total darkness. Fortunately, the hall remained relatively straight, and with their eyes adjusted to the gloom, they were always able to spot the next light ahead. Anytime, it curved or turned, there was always a light at the corner to allow them to adjust their way.
“So how long is this tunnel?” Perry finally asked, his voice unusually loud as it echoed off the walls around them.
“Not sure,” Gerard replied. “When we found it originally, someone went through it to the other side, but we’re not sure where it comes out.”
“They didn’t check?” Blake asked.
“They got to the other end and opened the door,” Dorin said. “We can find our way from there.”
“So we’re not going to come out in the middle of the base or anything,” Perry said.
“Going the wrong direction for that,” Dorin said.
“We know it’s safe because our scout came back intact, if you know what I mean,” Gerard said.
“I was wondering if we were heading in the direction of Carburast,” Blake said.
“The curves avoid it, near as we can figure,” Gerard said.
They approached a steel door that marked the end of the tunnel. Gerard turned the large locking mechanism that grated loudly as it released and opened the door to reveal a more refined concrete tunnel like that of a city sewer system. Gerard indicated they needed to go to the left since the system belonged to Carburast, which was to the right.
The tunnel was about ten feet wide and six and a half feet high with the same guide lighting on the walls at about ten foot intervals that the hidden tunnel had. Water flowed under their feet bene
ath a series of metal grates allowing them to walk in this cavernous underground without any concern of getting their feet wet. Blake guessed that if they walked toward Carburast, they would find pipes and wiring that would be accessed through this underground labyrinth.
They did not have to walk far since after their first turn, they spotted the welcome glow of natural light faintly illuminating the path ahead of them. Around one more turn, they spotted the exit a few hundred yards away. The tunnel rested on the edge of the woods, its wide, concrete opening stopping only a few feet past the exit, so they all walked onto bare, open ground near a road just off to their right. The open area looked like it used to be a parking area for vehicles that grass had long since overtaken.
Blake walked away from the exit and turned around to look up the short hill past the tunnel, and it only took him a moment to notice something peculiar about their journey – specifically, where they were in relation to Carburast. The fence that kept Carburast safe from the rest of the world sat only a few yards away from him, and by his memory of the road they took, this escape tunnel placed them directly underneath the town for quite some distance. A glance to Gerard and Dorin showed they were just as surprised by this as he was.
“I’m guessing you had no idea then,” Blake asked. Gerard and Dorin shook their heads. He looked back at the deadly city whose borders were so close and found this to be extremely interesting in relation to everything else they had learned.
“We were going to this power plant?” Perry asked. Gerard turned to him and nodded, bringing himself back to reality.
“Yes, of course,” Gerard said. “Follow me.”
CHAPTER NINE
Water hit Michelle in the face, and she snapped awake with a gasp. For a moment, she felt as if she were drowning, but a few breaths dispelled that idea. The last thing Michelle remembered was the explosion that had broken through the wall of the municipal building in Point Light and thrown her, Blake, Perry, and the man called Hector to the ground. Their hosts had been kind to them, so she could hardly believe they would splash water on her face. She forced her eyes open.
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