by Toby Neal
Jake gripped the edge, trying to pull himself up after her, his solar plexus spasming with the need to breathe—and finally, he did.
The air tasted like metal and burned like smoke and gave no relief.
Jake sagged back, collapsing onto a ledge well below Sophie’s.
Another breath seared his lungs. He coughed, but it didn’t help at all. His whole body shuddered. He pressed his lips into a crack against the wall, sucking the air hiding in it. He was smothering, and it hurt like a mofo.
Agony.
Fade to black.
At least they were together.
Chapter Twenty-One
Connor
The chopper settled onto the lava, rocking slightly on the uneven stone. Connor frowned, scanning the area. “Anybody see any sign of them?” He hadn’t been able to spot Sophie or Jake using the satellite imaging, and even though the beacon told him that the craft was virtually on top of her, nothing was visible.
Raveaux was already reaching for the door. “Maybe they’re down on the ground. We should search a grid.”
“Put on the portable oxy tanks netted onto the wall,” Agno said. “I smell sulfur dioxide. It’s emitted when lava first breaks out, and it’s nasty.” He had already torn off his helmet and reached under the seat to grab a plastic breathing mask attached to an oxygen canister.
Nine, discerning what was needed, grabbed three more of the mobile units from their cradles on the wall of the chopper. He put his unit on, keeping his knife at the ready.
“Secure the pilot so he doesn’t get any ideas about flying off and leaving us here,” Connor told his second in Thai. “Raveaux and I will start searching for them on the ground.”
Nine gave a short nod. Connor opened the sliding door of the craft and hopped out.
His rubber-soled sandals didn’t seem heavy duty enough for the rugged lava, nor did his thin white gi seem like it would withstand much contact with the brutal stone—but there was no help for it. He gestured to his tablet as he spoke to Raveaux. “I had the chopper put down six feet to the left of the beacon, but I’m beginning to wonder if the signal is very accurate. We should see Sophie and Jake already.”
Raveaux pointed to the spot Connor indicated. “Did it occur to you they could be below us? I wanted to tell you earlier. Sophie and Jake were dropped into a hole by the meth gang. A lava tube. Some of those go for miles under the surface. If you’re picking up the GPS signal here, they are probably below us.” The Frenchman scanned the ground. “Since visibility is so poor, we’re going to have to walk a grid. Use your tablet to identify the exact spot where the beacon is, and we’ll build our grid out from there.”
Connor breathed through this shock. Sophie could be buried out here! “Sophie! Sophie! Answer me!”
He sounded frantic, his voice muffled by the mask, but he didn’t care.
No reply.
Dense fog that smelled faintly but distinctively like sulfur swirled around them—this was what hell was going to smell like, most definitely.
But what Raveaux was saying made sense. Connor forced himself to take slow breaths of the oxygen from the mask—it was purer than the usual air, and he could feel it calming him, buoying him.
Embrace that. Use it. You’re in control of everything around you.
Connor walked carefully forward, holding the tablet out until he was directly on top of the signal. “This is my best guess for her exact location. But like I said, I don’t think this thing can be all that accurate.”
Raveaux darted forward suddenly, kneeling on a patch of soil to part some tough-looking grass. “I see steam coming up—Mon Dieu! There’s a crack here masked by the grass! They could be down below, in a cavern!”
Nine was getting out of the chopper as Connor swiveled back to face him. “We’re going to need the pickaxe and shovel. Quickly!”
Nine hurried to fetch the tools.
Connor knelt at the opening beside Raveaux, who was ripping at the tough grass with his bare hands, digging to widen the crack. “Sophie! Jake!” The man’s voice sounded as frantic as Connor’s had been. “We’re coming to get you out!”
Soon Nine and Raveaux were both hacking and chopping at the opening with the pickaxe and shovel. The crack, which had begun as a two-foot-long rift, widened under their rapid work.
Connor finally set the tablet aside—the beacon wasn’t moving. What did that mean? The fact that she hadn’t called out couldn’t be good . . .
This kind of thinking wasn’t helping. He needed to use his abilities. He sat down cross-legged.
Nine glanced at him with comprehension, but Connor’s apparent indolence seemed to push Raveaux over the edge. “You can move some damn dirt and make yourself useful!” Raveaux yelled at him, wild-eyed.
This man cared about Sophie and Jake. Good.
“I am being useful.” Connor shut his eyes. He centered himself, tuning into that deep knowing. He opened his inner self to “see.”
Two people were below them, one closer to the surface.
The smaller one had to be Sophie. Her energy signature was white, but it was going transparent around the edges as her life force ebbed.
The much larger energy signature beneath her had once been a vibrant orange, but it was darkening fast.
Connor opened his eyes. “I know where they are. Six feet and ten feet down from us, about eight feet to the left. The only way to reach them is to open this crack enough to drop to the bottom of the cavern. They are on the side wall, unconscious—probably from the toxic air.”
“Merde!” Raveaux redoubled his attack on the ground with the pickaxe. “How do you know this?”
Connor didn’t bother to answer. “We’re going to be too late,” he told Nine. “Unless . . .”
“You can do it, Number One. You’ve just never tried,” Nine guessed what he was thinking as the man often did, while never slowing in spading away the rock and soil that Raveaux loosened with the pickaxe.
Connor shut his eyes again.
Just because he’d never tried it didn’t mean it was impossible. He’d only ever slowed down time before—but maybe he could speed it up. “Anything’s possible to those who believe,” the Master’s resonant voice said in his mind.
Connor went inward.
He pictured Raveaux hitting the ground with the pickaxe as fast as the needle on a sewing machine. Pictured Nine removing the debris, both of them moving a thousand times faster. Every detail was etched in his mind.
He opened his eyes.
His compatriots looked like a film loop set on top speed, dirt flying everywhere. Interesting. He experienced time as normal. Connor stood, hurried to the chopper, and took out the stretcher and the spare O2 tanks, along with a large coil of rope.
When he returned with the rescue equipment, the two men had opened a big enough gap to slip through. Connor slowed time back down, and handed the rope to Nine. “Lower me in.”
He carried two extra O2 tanks tucked inside his gi and breathed through his mask, oxygenating his lungs, as the men lowered him down the narrow opening into what became a large, dark cavern filled with steam and noxious gas.
Visibility was poor, but he spotted Sophie immediately, sprawled on a stone ledge closest to the ceiling. Her white energy field glowed like moonlight.
Jake lay on a ledge below her. His energy field had gone a deep red. Jake was close to death.
The men lowered him to the floor of the chamber. Connor climbed the wall’s irregular layers rapidly, reaching Jake first. His former friend’s skin was white and clammy and he wasn’t breathing—probably too late to save him.
“If only I could go back in time,” Connor murmured, but from what he could tell so far, he could only affect the moments he currently occupied.
Connor began CPR, sucking O2 from the canister and blowing it into Jake’s mouth. He remembered doing this all too well from that other time he’d brought Jake back—was it worth doing this time? Jake could be a vegetable already from oxy
gen deprivation.
Steam thickened around them, and so did the smell of sulfur. The rock walls trembled ominously. He had to try to save Sophie while there was still time!
Connor blew one last blast of O2 into Jake’s unresponsive mouth and tied the rope around his chest, making a loop under the man’s arms. “Pull Jake up! He’s not breathing, but I’ve got the O2 on him. I have to get Sophie out, too. It’s getting bad down here!”
The rope, tight with Jake’s heavy body, seemed to ascend too slowly. Connor shut his eyes and increased the speed; Jake shot up and out of sight.
The conditions in the cave and the energy he was expending had begun to weaken Connor. He had to concentrate hard on keeping time moving faster as he climbed up to Sophie’s rocky ledge.
She lay sprawled face down, unconscious but breathing. Hopefully, she’d been able to get enough oxygen at the top of the chamber, with the air slit nearby. He put the second mask on over her nose and mouth, and turned on the unit.
“Grab the rope!” Raveaux yelled from above as the rope dropped down, swinging back and forth with a rock now tied to the bottom of it.
Connor caught hold after a few tries. He tied the rope under Sophie’s armpits, tucked the small tank into the rope loop and yanked on it.
“Pull her up and then get me as soon as you can!” Connor yelled back up to the surface. A yellow indicator light blinked near the control knob of the tank. “My O2 is running low.”
“Copy that!” Raveaux called back down. The men hauled Sophie up and out of sight.
Connor sat down on the ledge, suddenly exhausted and dizzy. He tried to speed up the time that the rope came back down to him, but nothing happened. The tunnel above remained stubbornly empty.
Spots circled his vision. He lay down on the ledge, still warm from Sophie’s body.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Raveaux
Raveaux had met Jake for the first time a few days before the mission to the Big Island, when Sophie had invited him over to her apartment in the Pendragon Arches for a little party of drink and pupus, that Hawaiian word for hors d’oeuvres.
She’d had music on, smoky jazz from New Orleans, and the sweet dark sound poured out like molasses as she opened the door. “Glad you could make it, Pierre.”
“I am glad as well.” Raveaux held out a respectable Beaujolais. “For your wine cabinet.”
Sophie smiled. She was wearing something sleek and silver that glimmered to the floor. “I like a recovering alcoholic with the nerve to bring a bottle of wine to a party.” She took the offering in its pretty bag. “And knowing your taste, it will be too good for the company.”
Raveaux shrugged. “I didn’t know what you’d be serving, but of course you can open it now.”
“If you say to save it, then I will save it.” Her teeth gleamed, a row of harbor lights guiding him in. “Come and meet my friends.” She caught his hand to tug him into the dimly-lit room. Raveaux closed the door behind him, letting his eyes adjust to a glow emitted by jars filled with coiled twinkle lights that reminded him of capturing fireflies in bottles in his youth. A small mirror ball in one corner cast spangles over people talking in couples and clusters, some of them dancing. The music surrounded and suffused him.
“Something to hold in your hand is our first order of business.” Sophie led him into a geometric corner of the large, open room that marked the kitchen.
More bottles with twinkly lights decorating the area filled one countertop. Sophie reached unerringly in among them and grabbed a green glass bottle. She filled a crystal highball with bubbly water and ice, speared a lime on a plastic sword, and used it to swirl the cubes. She presented the drink to him. “You get one of the only real glasses in the place. Enjoy.”
“You remembered my evening Perrier and lime.” Raveaux was warmed as he took the glass. “I like the sound of the bubbles and ice cubes, even without the gin.”
“I know.” Sophie was already turning away to open a cabinet and stow his gift on the top shelf. “For when we need the good stuff,” she stage-whispered. “Thank you, Pierre.” Her kiss on his cheek sizzled everywhere, and he shut his eyes.
“So, this must be the famous French detective!” The loud male voice interrupting them had to belong to Sophie’s boyfriend, Jake.
Raveaux opened his eyes and focused. Jake was backlit and appeared as nothing but a large male shape. “Bonsoir. Yes, I am Raveaux. Thank you for inviting me to your evening.”
“Any friend of Sophie’s is a friend of mine.” Jake slid a burly arm around Sophie from behind her, pressing her slender form in its revealing shimmery dress against his body.
The man was as Raveaux had expected, one of those ex-military testosterone-driven types who had to establish dominance with anyone else near his woman. He hadn’t warmed to Jake that evening—but even so, he sucked a breath of shock now as he and Nine hauled Jake’s heavy form up and out of the pit.
Jake’s skin was bright red, as if he’d been parboiled, and where it wasn’t bruised, it was stippled with bleeding wounds. His head lolled as the rope dug in under his armpits. The oxygen mask covered his nose and mouth, but his chest didn’t seem to be moving.
Nine grabbed the rope and dragged the man up, gesturing toward the chopper and chattering in Thai. “I don’t understand what you are saying,” Raveaux panted. His hands were raw, his muscles trembling at the strain of pulling Jake up out of the pit. The man was over two hundred pounds of muscle and bone.
Nine made a hand-over-hand gesture, and Raveaux turned to face the pilot, scowling at them through the windshield. “Yes. We need his help to bring Sophie and Connor up, too. I get it.”
Nine nodded briskly. He bent down toward Jake, checking his vitals.
The man already looked gone to Raveaux, but they had to try to revive him—and Nine was right. Jake had been so heavy it had taken all their strength to pull him up, and the air coming out of the vent was none too good. He was glad of his small O2 canister as he forced himself to hurry to the chopper. “We need you to help us pull the other two up.”
The pilot tugged at plastic zip ties anchoring him to a grip bar at the side of his door. “Then cut me loose.”
Raveaux cut the ties with his combat knife. The two of them hurried back.
“He looks bad.” The pilot stared down at Jake as Nine did CPR.
Raveaux knelt beside the prone body, preparing to assist, when Nine lifted his mouth from Jake’s and grinned suddenly, holding up a finger.
Was Jake’s chest rising and falling? It was! Nine swiftly covered the man’s nose and mouth with the plastic O2 mask he’d been using. Nine gave him a thumbs-up, and Raveaux nodded, surprised to find himself smiling. “Très bien.”
“Where are the other two?” the pilot asked.
“Connor must be trying to revive Sophie.” Raveaux’s belly was taut with stress. “Why don’t you and Nine get Jake on the chopper and secure him on oxygen, and when Connor signals me, I’ll start pulling Sophie up. You two can help when you get back.” Using hand gestures, he was able to communicate that idea to Nine, and soon the two men were grunting with effort as they carried Jake to the chopper.
Raveaux knelt at the slit, tugging experimentally at the rope they’d dropped back down.
He felt a tug on the rope, and Connor told him to pull Sophie up and that his oxygen was getting low. Raveaux gripped the rope, bracing himself, and pulled.
He did his best to use his back and legs, but his hands burned like fire as the blisters from last time opened and bled. Sophie’s weight seemed like half that of Jake, but it was still a lot for someone who’d already used up a lot of his resources. Raveaux dug deep, shutting his eyes, heaving back with his bodyweight, then lunging forward to grab further down the rope, then doing it again.
Relief was sudden as Nine joined in, pulling with him, and the pilot, too. Only a few minutes later, Sophie’s short-cropped hair, gray with ash and dirt, appeared in the opening.
They tugged her
up onto the lip of the hole. She was as filthy as Jake, but her color was better, and she was breathing regularly from the O2 tank Connor had sent up with her. Nine untied the rope from under her arms as Raveaux checked her pulse.
“She’s breathing much more strongly than Jake. Pulse is good, too.” He pulled up an eyelid. Her warm brown iris swiveled to look at him, the pupil shrinking rapidly. “She’s conscious.” He leaned down close to her ear. “Sophie. It’s Pierre. Just relax. We’re getting you and Jake out of here, and you’re on oxygen. Breathe deep and clear your lungs.” Her eyelids seemed to flutter in answer; she gave a tiny nod.
“Connor?” Nine pronounced his master’s name in an odd way as he knelt at the crumbling slit, calling down into it. “Connor!” The man turned to Raveaux, his eyes white-ringed with panic. He spoke rapidly and gestured—he wanted to go down after his master.
“Okay. Let’s move Sophie into the chopper and get her settled. That way we can take off as fast as we can after we bring him up,” Raveaux gestured to Sophie, then pointing to the helicopter.
Nine looked frustrated, shook his head, indicated the hole.
Raveaux frowned. He felt an urgency about getting their two victims to the hospital as soon as possible. Connor would be all right for a few more minutes.
“Let’s move her,” he told Agno. “We’ll lower Nine back in when she’s settled.” He gently set the green O2 canister on Sophie’s chest, then picked her up under the arms. The pilot picked up her feet, and they carried her toward the chopper.
Nine glared after them, then tied the rope around his waist. He looped it around a large stone, turned and lowered himself out of sight into the hole.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Raveaux
Raveaux and Agno pulled on the rope moments later when Nine signaled them, but Connor wasn’t coming up—they simply didn’t have the strength. “There’s a winch on the bird,” the pilot panted. “Let me move the chopper closer and we’ll use it to haul him up.”
