“Yeah, it looks cool.”
The boys made their way over to the rock.
As they approached, Blake saw it was not a rock or a boulder, but a lichen- and moss-covered concrete bunker-looking box sunken into the earth. On the right side, two angular sides or fins protruded out, inviting a closer inspection. They made their way around to the fins and discovered they were supporting walls that sheltered a medium sized stairwell that descended into the darkness of a tunnel. A weathered metal sign hung above the entrance, its message clear: Keep Out.
“That’s not meant for us,” Blake said, smiling wickedly. “Right?”
“Of course not,” Quinn answered, looking at his friend with mock indignation. “I’m sure whoever put that sign up did not intend it for two teenagers on an exploratory mission to discover the deep, dark secrets of Rangeley, Maine.”
“Exactly what I was thinking.”
Blake hunched as he descended the bunker’s worn stairs carefully and then stood up in the entrance. I’m glad this was built for tall people.
“You didn’t happen to bring a flashlight, did you?” Quinn asked as he made his way down the stairs. “We won’t be able to go very far.”
“I have my phone’s flashlight.”
“You brought your cellphone? Even though it has no signal?”
“Force of habit.” He shrugged.
“Good point.”
Blake pulled his phone out of his pocket, tapped on flashlight mode, and then led the way into the tunnel. It descended slightly as they made their way inside. He felt the cool dampness of the tunnel walls around him on his skin. Occasionally, roots poked through cracks in the concrete and dripping water seeped through at other points. The air smelled of damp earth and plant matter, but it didn’t seem moldy or musty.
About fifty feet in, the darkness engulfed them, and Quinn put his hand on Blake’s shoulder.
“Train tracks?” Quinn asked, pointing at the ground ahead of them.
“Yup,” Blake said, shining his light downward. A set of miniature railroad tracks abruptly ended in front of them as if they had been ripped out from that point to the entrance of the cave. However, the tracks continued as they made their way deeper into the tunnel.
“Looks like a mining tunnel of some kind, like in Indiana Jones,” Quinn quipped.
“If there are monster snakes, spiders, or flame-throwing savages in here, I’m out.”
“We’re in Maine, Blake. None of those things exist in Maine. It probably just dead ends anyway.”
“You never know,” Blake said, carefully stepping on the old wooden ties that connected the rusting rails together.
After a few more steps, Quinn squeezed Blake’s arm. He stopped moving and looked over his shoulder, even though he couldn’t see his friend’s face.
“What?” Blake asked.
“Sssh. What’s that noise?”
“You’re being an ass.”
“No, I’m serious. It’s like a humming sound.”
Blake exhaled and concentrated on the sounds within the tunnel. Quinn was right; a strange humming resonated in the tunnel around them.
“It sounds mechanical.”
“Or electrical,” Quinn added. “It’s like, thrumming or something. Let’s keep going.”
“Okay.” Blake continued walking forward and Quinn kept his hand on his shoulder. The closer they got to whatever was on the other side of the tunnel, the louder the sound became.
“It’s actually pulsing very slowly,” Quinn whispered.
“Yeah,” Blake said, noting the rise and fall of the oscillating energy noise.
“How deep do you think we are?” Quinn asked.
“I have no idea.” They stopped and turned around to look behind them. The entrance to the tunnel was a small dot far in the distance above them.
“We’re a heck of a lot farther in than I thought,” Quinn said.
“I don’t think we have far to go,” Blake said. “I see blue light ahead of us.”
“Oh, you’re right! That’s so cool…I mean weird, what’s a blue light doing underground?”
Blake chuckled. “Let’s go find out.” The boys pressed on and made their way to the end of the tunnel where their path was blocked by a large, rusting metal door. In the space between the door and the threshold, blue light glowed brightly when the sound became loud and dimmed when the sound became softer.
“Do you think it’s locked?” Quinn whispered, shuffling up to the door.
“How the hell do I know?” Blake whispered back.
“Wait, there’s no lock,” Quinn said, pointing at the pull-style door handle. “Why is there no lock?”
“We’re in the middle of no-where Maine, that’s why.”
Quinn nodded and looked at Blake in the dim light. “Should we?”
“We didn’t come all this way not to,” Blake said, reaching for the handle.
“Wait, turn off your flashlight. If there’s someone in there I don’t want them to see us right away.”
“Good point.” Blake turned off the flash light app and put his phone into the pocket of his shorts. “Well, here goes nothing.” He reached out, grabbed the door knob, and pulled.
Nothing.
He pulled a little harder.
Still nothing.
“It won’t open,” he whispered.
“Let’s try together,” Quinn suggested.
“Okay.”
They both wrapped their hand around the knob.
Quinn counted off for them. “One, two, three…” They pulled together, and the door made a strange creaking sound that echoed in the tunnel, but it didn’t open.
“I think it budged a little. Maybe it’s just rusted shut,” Quinn whispered. “Let’s try again and really pull. Just wait for the noise to get loud.”
“Okay.”
They both grabbed the knob again and as the humming became loud again, Quinn counted off. “One, two, three…”
The door yielded to their combined strength and jerked open in their hands, causing them to stumble back as a powerful light source bathed them in brilliant hues of blue. Then, the light dimmed as the oscillating humming sound faded. Blake looked at Quinn, who looked at him with wide eyes that shifted between the open door and Blake’s eyes.
Blake listened as well.
Nothing.
There was no sound other than the weird humming with the blue lights. Quinn jerked his head to the open door and Blake nodded.
Blake pulled the door open and the two boys stepped through it, the old door closer hissing as it slowly pulled the door shut behind them. He glanced at the door frame one last time to make sure there were no locks on it. The last thing he wanted was to be trapped underground in someone’s weird science experiment.
“Wow, it looks a lot like the X-Men’s Cerebro in here,” Quinn said, pointing to the ceiling of whatever they were in.
Blake followed his buddy’s finger up to the neatly arranged metallic-looking silver and blue hexagonal plates around them. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and the oscillating pattern of the blue light.
“Dude, this has to be alien. Did we just discover an alien spaceship?” Quinn asked excitedly.
“With a concrete bunker and old mining tracks attached to it? Unlikely.”
“But what if those were added after it crashed?” Quinn said, becoming more daring and stepping into the center of the thing Blake decided was a cool-looking, futuristic geometric dome.
“Uh-huh,” Blake said. His sneaker splashed in a small puddle. Glancing down, he noticed the rocky ground was wet. He returned his gaze to the domed chamber around him. The interior was about thirty feet in diameter and contained only two doors; the one they came through and the one on the opposite side. The topmost point of the dome above them had to be seventy-five feet up. In the center of the dome’s ceiling, a glowing blue-white ring on a conical silver thing with three upside-down antenna arrays sent pulses of blue-white light outward across the top o
f the dome through eight translucent tubes placed between the hexagonal plates that lined the chamber’s walls. The eight tubes demarcated the eight sides of the octagonal chamber and traveled down the walls into the rock floor where they directed the energy-light they carried toward a six-foot in diameter ring of swirling, spinning blue-white energy set in the center of the floor. Inside the circle of the light, a metal disc covered the rock floor. Blake assumed the energy traveled further into the ground, but he didn’t understand how.
“Look, a hatch,” Quinn said, pointing toward an open hatch in the floor to one side of the dome.
“Good thing we didn’t miss that and fall through it,” Blake commented.
Quinn walked to the open hatch and squatted, straining to see its secrets. “There’s more light down here, and a ladder.” He looked up at Blake, who nodded.
“Go ahead, it’s not like anyone’s here.”
Quinn climbed through the hatch and made his way down the metal ladder.
Blake squatted near the top and waited.
“There’s a lot more of that blue light stuff and I can see where it goes through the floor. There’s nothing down here but a bunch of big boxes.”
What the heck kind of place is this? Weird lights, strange sounds, a man-made—or alien—underground dome thing and now a room full of big boxes?
“I think they’re batteries,” Quinn called up from the floor below. “They look like really big car batteries and they go on and on. The room down here is way bigger than the cave you’re standing in. There’s also this big silver thing under the middle of the cave that has tons of wires going out from it, but each box has only two wires going to the only two terminals I can see on them. They all have lots of green lights, too.”
“Cool,” Blake said. He stood up and turned around, more curious about the place than ever. So now we have batteries under the floor…
Quinn climbed back up the ladder and shut the hatch behind him.
“I don’t think those are fancy lights,” Blake said, tucking his hands into the pockets of his shorts.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s electricity…” Blake raised his arm and waved it through the air. He stopped and stared at his arm hair; it was not standing on end. “No, it’s not electricity…but I mean…it’s some kind of energy. This entire room is gathering energy from somewhere and…converting it…for storage beneath us.”
“Wicked,” Quinn said, taking in Blake’s hypothesis.
“That means there must be something above the ground collecting the energy, right?”
“That makes sense. So, if it’s collecting energy from above ground, it’s converting it in here and storing it below us.”
“But why is this energy moving so slow? We can’t see electricity moving except in lightning, and that’s friggin’ fast.”
“I didn’t say I figured it all out, buddy,” Blake answered, chuckling.
“What are they storing it for?” Quinn asked. “Do you think this is what solar panel energy looks like?”
Blake slouched his shoulders and rolled his eyes at Quinn. “Really?”
“I’m kidding. But what other kind of energy gets collected above ground? This isn’t hydroelectric and there’s no dam near here. At least I don't think there is because we should hear running water and turbines.”
Blake shrugged.
Quinn walked to the closest energy tube and stared at the pulsing blue-white light traveling through it. “These are conduits, then. I wonder what all the metal plates are for?” He turned around and looked at the hexagonal plates that lined the chamber.
“What do the metal plates do in Cerebro?” Blake asked.
“Well, amplify and focus, I guess.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You think this thing works like made up comic book technology?” Quinn ran to the center of the room and jumped over the ring of light, landing on the metal disk in the center.
Blake nodded. “If this is a conversion chamber then, yeah. I think it’s why the energy moves slowly through those tubes. I just don’t know what it’s amplifying or focusing.” He followed Quinn onto the metal disc thing.
Above them, the loud clang of a mechanical switch flipping echoed in the chamber. Quinn gasped with fright and Blake nearly jumped out of his skin. The quick whine of a heavy motor activating beneath them pulled Blake’s attention to the metal disk they stood on.
“What the hell?” Quinn said, his index finger pointing up at the ceiling.
Blake ignored the rumbling floor and looked up. “Holy shit!”
The blue-white ring of energy-light was spinning quickly, releasing a shimmering cascade of energy into the chamber. The conical thing with the three antennas moved down toward them and the pulsing energy sound increased its cadence and speed at the same time.
“Look at the walls,” Quinn said. Blake looked over and saw the downward-flowing streams of energy-light in the eight tubes had reversed. It rapidly flowed upward to the pulsing ring at the top of the dome.
“We need to get out of here,” Quinn said, turning to run back to the door they entered from.
Blake looked down and couldn’t see the chamber floor around the disk. This metal floor thing elevated itself!
“No wait, don’t!” Blake yelled. He grabbed at Quinn’s arm and pulled him back from the edge of the disk—now realized as a platform. “We’re like ten feet off the ground!”
“What?” Quinn exclaimed, looking around them.
Suddenly, the sound of an energy surge rapidly charging and discharging filled the chamber. Quinn spun around and grabbed Blake’s arms. Without thought, Blake grabbed Quinn’s arms and the two boys looked into each other’s widened eyes, fearing the worst.
“I love you buddy, but I think we’re fu…”
The blue and white energy swirls above them exploded downward with a blinding flash and a deafening blast. Too stunned to move, Blake looked down and watched the metal disk glow yellow as it reacted with the energy swirling around them.
The disk beneath them shook as a second, much louder rapid energy blast rose from the ground, moved to the ceiling, and then stopped.
The boys looked up and winced.
A cascade of energy rocketed downward and surged through their bodies, energizing them. The breath in Blake’s throat became stuck as he could not inhale or exhale in the moment. Blake felt all the muscles in his body constrict, especially the ones gripping Quinn’s arms. Quinn’s fingers tightened on his arms as well. Blake felt the hair on his head, arms, and legs stand on end as the powerful rush of strange energy surged through his body.
Quinn’s mouth fell open and his facial expression conveyed terror.
Blake found the strength to shift his eyes downward to look at Quinn and watched as blue sparks and arcs of energy jump between the upper and lower teeth of Quinn’s open mouth, occasionally arcing on his tongue as well. He saw his best friend’s eyes glow an extremely bright shade of blue as they met Blake’s gaze. For Blake, everything around him turned bright-orange. The roar of energy and raw power in the room was deafening, but just as mysteriously as it started, it stopped.
The disk-platform they stood on lowered and retracted into the floor. Soon, the boys were back on ground level, shaking as they held one another in fright.
“I…I think we’re alive,” Blake said.
Quinn turned and fell to his knees, dry-heaving.
Above them, the same clang of a mechanical switch flipping echoed in the chamber. Blake looked up. The conical antenna array had retracted up as well and the chamber seemed to have reset itself. This time, no energy moved in the tubes.
“We need to get out of here,” Blake said, pulling Quinn up. They stumbled together as waves of dizziness and vertigo screwed with their balance. Quinn kept dry-heaving, a sound that challenged Blake’s increasing nausea.
“Your eyes,” Quinn sputtered, glancing at him, “they're glowing orange.”
Blake looked at Qu
inn and gasped. “Your eyes are glowing blue! Now come on, let's go.”
Blake pulled Quinn up once more. They made it to the door and Blake pushed it open, noting how hot it felt to the touch. Several minutes later, they were out of breath and struggling to make it to the light at the end of the tunnel that twisted and turned in their disoriented vision and sense of balance. Quinn finally stopped dry-heaving, which helped them get out of the tunnel and follow the trees back to the campground trails.
“I…I…” Quinn said, stumbling, unable to utter a sentence. Blake turned and watched his friend collapse to the ground.
“Qu…” Blake tried to say while trying to turn his body around. “Qui…” He fell to his knees, quickly losing all strength in his legs. Oh no, I’m too young to die. Please, not today. His vision blurred, and he tried to lay down next to Quinn. At least…at least they’ll know we’re…
Blake collapsed into darkness.
1-6 | Web of Lies
Quinn
“WE FOLLOWED THE LINE OF fallen trees into the woods,” Quinn said, telling a different version of their misadventure to Agent Victor Kraze in their hospital room-turned-prison cell.
“So, you went off the trails?” Victor asked, his hands folded in his lap.
“Yes,” Quinn admitted.
“Fair enough, no judgement here. I probably would have, too. What happened next?”
Quinn looked over at Blake who shook his head ever-so-slightly; the kind of non-verbal communication only a close sibling, best friend, or longtime lover would notice and understand.
“Well, we found a whole lot of nothing, to be honest,” Quinn lied. “I remember some big boulders, a bunch of weird old sand piles, but we just kept going.”
“You wandered into the woods without a compass and working cell phone?” Victor asked, his face expressing surprise.
“I had my cell phone with me. I don’t know where it is now, but it didn’t work anyway.”
“The hospital has your cell phone. It should work in here, although cell phones aren’t permitted in this wing of the hospital. I’m not sure when you’ll get it back, to be honest.”
Quinn noted the slight inflection on the last word of Victor’s sentence. I don’t care if he’s on to us or not. I’m not telling him about the energy thing.
The Guardians Omnibus Page 6
