The Doctor drew in a long breath. “All right,” he said. “I'll get everything ready. But at the first sign of danger you pull out of Pripyat, you hear me?”
The Wasteland
Until stepping into the city of Pripyat, Thomas’s concept of solitude had been a walk by the beach, reading a book behind his house in Ohio, or even watching TV by himself while his parents, and later, his Grandpa, were out from the house.
The word took on a whole new meaning as he walked the overgrown streets of this once young city that housed almost fifty thousand souls before Chernobyl.
Solitude was the pair of shoes abandoned by the side of the street; a bike, its wheels flat and its frame corroded neatly parked against a wall; the buildings, once homes for the population, stared at them with dusty windows and broken glass. Vines crept along the sides of the walls, and trees grew on the rooftops and even inside some structures.
Solitude was walking through a modern city built for thousands of people, with schools, hospitals, apartments, cars, and monuments, and realizing that everything humanity could do was useless without any people to use it.
Chernobyl hadn’t been the first or last nuclear disaster. Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania had the honor of being the first, but while it had caused much concern, it had been relatively low-key and the authorities gained control of the reactor.
Chernobyl had been the first to cause real damage in a large scale though, and most of Europe was affected in some way by the fallout from the nuclear accident and an exclusion zone of thirty kilometers around the nuclear plant had been established. The young city of Pripyat had been built in 1970 to house the power plant workers and their families. It was located just three kilometers away from the plant, and it had been evacuated with great haste. Most of the population had taken only their papers and very little valuables as they were told that they would be able to return after three days, when in reality it would be thousands of years before the radioactive levels were safe again for humans.
Pripyat had become a monument to the horror of technology gone amuck.
“Are in we in any danger?” Tony asked, breaking the silence.
“Not immediate, only if we stay too long or if we approach the reactor. A couple of entrepreneurs have already set up tours to Pripyat. It’s becoming a ‘Hot Spot’, so to speak, for tourism.” Bolswaithe was checking the radiation counter he was carrying.
“What’s wrong?” Thomas asked Elise. Her eyes were watery and she wiped her runny nose with a tissue.
“It’s nothing,” she said as two tears ran down her face.
“I feel it too,” Henri told her. “The void.” The grotesque clenched his fists.
“There is no Magic in this place,” Elise told them. “It’s the first time I feel like this. The plants are here, but they aren’t connected.”
“What do you mean?” Thomas asked. He couldn’t sense anything, but he knew there wasn’t an Oracle sign in Pripyat.
“The plants and animals here are alive, but without the magical spark,” Elise told them. “They’re not connected to any of the Pillars.”
It made sense now; the Pillar’s magic permeated the world, especially those that irradiated life Magic, like Ukiah. The power of Magic was completely opposed to technology, and it was only logical that the Chernobyl disaster had scoured the area of all Magic, including that of the Pillars.
Thomas could only sense the Oracle’s magical signature, and other powerful signatures like his grandfather's sword but Elise was a Mage—she used Magic, wielded it, and could sense it all around her. She was visibly affected by the lack of connection to the Pillars, the source of all Magic.
“This place is a wasteland,” Elise said.
“Will you be all right?” Bolswaithe asked. “You want to turn back?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine. It’s just sad.” She cleaned her eyes. “Let’s go.”
They continued down the street. They had entered Pripyat at the intersection between Kurchatova Street and Lenina Avenue. Thomas saw a dilapidated store with the name “Rainbow” etched in the front window. Surely there had been some looters going through the abandoned city, because the floors of the buildings were strewn with paper and debris. Strangely, most of the windows still had their glass intact.
After a couple of minutes there was a beep from Bolswaithe’s wristpadd. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “Team 17 reports that Morgan has appeared.”
“They’re here?” The last thing Thomas wanted was to face his grandpa’s team. His cheek was almost healed, but it still throbbed a little, and the thin scar was a reminder of Nardir’s hatred for him.
“They’re almost sixty miles away,” Bolswaithe said. “Magic and the portals they could’ve used closer to Pripyat were also destroyed by the radiation. We have teams on the field tracking them.”
“A little room to move,” Tony said. “So where is this guy?”
“I don’t know,” Thomas said. “I guess we’ll know when we find him.”
They kept walking through the city in silence. They went around the hospital and all the way to the amusement park; its Ferris wheel was corroded, but still standing against the clear, blue sky. The gymnasium and the swimming pool were in worse shape though. The wood from the basketball court had all but splintered and decayed, and while the pool still had most of the tiles, the roof cover had completely caved in.
Thomas had seen the hammer and sickle of the old Soviet Republic prominently displayed in many places and on old documents on the floor.
“Do you think he’s in the Palace of Culture?” Bolswaithe asked, but Thomas had just seen something that caught his eye. He approached a dark stain on a wall that seemed out of place. “It’s probably radioactive mold. Some years ago, scientists sent a robot into the reactor and found black mold thriving in the radiation,” Bolswaithe said.
“Life bouncing back,” Elise said. “It survived the Wraith extinctions, and it will survive this.” She smiled. “And it also has the spark of Magic, as tenuous as it may be.”
“It’s not the only thing it has,” Thomas said, moving in front of the stain to take a better look. The mold wasn’t writing, but it was arranged in a special way against the wall, and as he did with all other codes, he deciphered its meaning. “Prometheus,” he said aloud.
“The legend?” Bolswaithe asked. “That’s a clear connection to the Guardians.”
“No,” Thomas said. “Just the word: Prometheus. I’m sure it’s a message.”
“That’s also the name of Pripyat’s cinema,” Bolswaithe said. “This way.”
They walked until they reached the street where the cinema was located. The building was as dilapidated as all others, but the mosaic on one wall still retained some of its original beauty.
“Here we are,” Bolswaithe said. “Should we go inside?”
Thomas looked around; this area was covered with much more vegetation. “No,” he said. He looked at the ground and found a small batch of black mold growing in the concrete. It looked as if it had been spattered on purpose. He saw another batch of mold leading away from the cinema toward a block of granite. He began to follow the trail of black mold toward it. “What is this here for?” he asked as he reached the granite block.
“This was the base for a statue of Prometheus,” Bolswaithe said. As Thomas knelt closer to the mold, he began to sense another sigil in the mold. “But it has been moved closer to the—”
“We want a deal,” Thomas said, interrupting Bolswaithe, and the block of granite rumbled. Thomas stood back as it lifted on one side and moved, letting out a hiss of stagnant air. A flight of granite stairs led down a shaft, and a line of old light bulbs lit up along the roof of the entrance leading down.
Thomas looked at the others.
“I guess we found it,” Tony said and pulled out his gun and lantern. “So let's get this thing done.”
Bolswaithe frowned. “I don't think that's the best course of action.”
“W
hat?” Tony cocked his gun. “Come on, Bolswaithe. This is no time for jokes.”
“I’m not joking,” Bolswaithe said. “We didn't find where he lived. We were invited.”
“That's true,” Thomas said. “He basically told us where to find him if we needed his help.”
“Come on guys!” Tony said, trying to find support with Elise, but she shook her head. “It's not like we are just having lunch with this guy at his house!”
“How would you react if someone you invited came to your house with a readied gun?” Elise said.
“I'd kick your butt...” Henri rumbled from behind him. “Hard.”
Tony sighed. “Okay!” he said, putting away his gun. “But I'm not going first in there.”
“I'll go.” Bolswaithe went down the stairs followed by Thomas and Elise. Tony stopped Henri with a hand.
“I'm not going last either,” he said, rushing down the stairs.
Henri shook his head as he followed them, and the granite block closed behind them.
The Dark Dealmaker
The long granite tunnel was barely lit by the bulbs. Musty odors and patches of black mold covered parts of the walls, and a fetid, humid smell permeated the air. The electricity fluctuated, and the bulbs dimmed and brightened at intervals.
One of the bulbs went out as Bolswaithe stepped under it. “There is a larger room about ten feet ahead,” he said. Thomas remembered a tour he had taken with his dad a long time ago through an abandoned mine. This smell was even worse than in that mine, like damp mold and rotten food.
“Are we going down?” Thomas asked.
“Yes,” Bolswaithe said. “It has a mild inclination. We are about thirty-three feet underground.”
“About thirty-three feet? And how many inches?” Tony said from behind.
“Six and three quarters,” Bolswaithe answered mockingly, but Thomas knew that Bolswaithe was probably accurate.
“Six and three quarters...” Thomas heard Tony softly muttering from behind.
They entered a larger room. It was double the height of the hallway, and the walls were full of old shelves and tables. Coffers were strewn on the floor, and old coat hangers and bookshelves were set without any arrangement. Almost all surfaces of the shelves and walls were covered with decaying things—rotten food, moldy batteries, a beat-up radio.
Yellowish paper, old newspapers, and magazines, some dating to hundreds of years ago, sat in piles along the shelves. Clothing and military uniforms from different eras hung on broken hangers. Toys, figurines, and even jewelry was thrown around and covered with dust.
A pile of gold coins gathered dust in a corner.
The walls were full of burned out pictures, old men and women, families, and kids hugging a pet. The people in the pictures seemed happy, but Thomas could sense that they also were sad or nervous. He approached a map of Spain on a wall to see it more clearly; two cities were circled in red—Guadalquivir and Seville—and someone had drawn a line over the train track that connected them. Pinned to the map was the picture of a man on his dying bed, his family kneeling beside him and the words “Spanish Train” scribbled in a dark oily stain, he saw the Dark Dealmaker pictured by the bedside.
“I wouldn't touch anything,” Elise said. “Some of these things are sure to be Magical.”
“I see a table in the center,” Bolswaithe said as he moved around the furniture, trying hard not to touch anything.
The dim lights gave out strange shadows as they flickered. Thomas saw a gold coin with a bullet embedded in the middle reflecting the light, and beside it an old, yellowed baseball, the signatures of the team unreadable because of its deterioration.
They reached the center of the room. An old table with a chair on each side seemed to be the only furniture the dark Dealmaker regularly used.
“I don’t think anybody is home,” Bolswaithe said.
“Hello!” Thomas yelled. “I'm Thomas Byrne!”
His call went unanswered.
Tony circled the table, looking at the things on the shelves. “Whew!” Tony said. “This guy’s a packrat.”
The lights flickered and the shelves produced strange shadows.
“More like a collector.” A voice startled them as the Dealmaker materialized from behind an old bookcase. “Or like De Sade put it, a connoisseur.” He was carrying a brand new football.
He placed the football on a shelf, and within seconds the football deflated and wrinkled in front of their eyes. It became as corroded as everything else in the room. “I'm sorry for being late,” the Dealmaker said. “I was making new friends.”
The Dealmaker pulled out a chair and sat down. He rubbed his long-fingered hands over his bald head, leaving a dark, oily residue that was absorbed by his skin. “Are you ready to make a deal?” he said with a crooked smile.
“You know of our problem,” Bolswaithe said. It wasn't a question.
“You mean the tests? The years of work down the drain? No one taking you seriously, always the joke, overworked, underappreciated, ready to shine but never allowed. The mockery of your family line.”
“What are you talking about?” Thomas exchanged a questioning look with Bolswaithe.
“Shut up,” Tony said, and they all looked at him; he was ready to draw one of his swords.
“Oh yes, the mockery of your family line. I can help you with that,” the Dealmaker told Tony.
“Shut up!” Tony yelled as he pulled out the sword.
“Stop!” Elise interposed herself between Tony and the table. Tony seemed to react to her presence, and he stepped back.
“A hybrid, an experiment born out from love. Way above half your heritage and a disappointment to the other half. Must be hard to know that you'll never be up to your daddy’s expectations...Princess.”
Elise turned around to face him. Thomas could see the anger building up inside her.
“He does love you with all his heart though, and he’s going to be very saddened when you die. You will outlive your human mother, but not the Elven father. Unless, of course, he is killed before his time.”
“Stop or I'll put an end to you.” Henri pushed hard on the bookshelf next to him, sending the contents to the floor and a cloud of dust throughout the room. The grotesque stepped forward, ready to attack.
The Dealmaker smiled. “I will,” he said acidly, “but not because of you. You're just a puppet.” Henri seemed to freeze where he was standing. “A failed Guardian, your reason to exist lost his head long ago. Did you fail because of circumstance, or did you betray your father on purpose? Out of spite for the King’s new mistress? You and your brothers just watched the rabble come in and get King Louie and Marie Antoinette, didn’t you? You didn’t lift a finger for them, and their children rotted away in prison—”
“Enough!” Thomas said, pulling out the chair and sat down at the table across from the man. He was indeed a Boogeyman, and he felt like he was going to deal with the Devil himself. “I am ready to deal.”
The Dealmaker wetted his lips with a purplish tongue as he looked at Bolswaithe. “I see your bravado is gone,” he told him. “I can help you too, you know?”
“Leave them alone.” Thomas smacked the table with his fist. “I'm the one who's making the deal.”
The Dealmaker crossed his hands in front of him. “What is your problem?”
“You know.”
“I know about many...” the Dealmaker said and Thomas felt something coursing through him, like a soft draft going through his skin to the man in front of him. The Dealmaker rolled his eyes in something close to ecstasy.
It sickened Thomas.
“So much to do. So many problems to solve,” the Dealmaker said.
“I just need your help with one.”
“And which one would that be?”
“My grandfather keeps tracking us wherever we go. I want that to stop without harming my grandfather,” Thomas said, and the draft immediately stopped.
“Oh that…” The Dealmaker cla
cked his mouth. “Yes, I can help you, but what are you going to give me in return?”
“What are you asking?” Thomas said, dreading what the Dealmaker would ask from him.
“I asked you once for a book,” the Dealmaker leaned forward on the table.
“Mysteries of the Worm, Ludwig Prinn,” Thomas said, remembering the first time he had seen this creature in the library. He looked over at Bolswaithe, who was already relaying the information to the Mansion.
“It's too dangerous to give it to you,” Bolswaithe said as he read his wristpadd.
“No deal,” Thomas said. “It has to be something else.”
“Oh, I wouldn't want to keep it,” the Dealmaker said. “I just need to read a couple of pages.”
Bolswaithe typed on his wristpadd.
“There is nothing more you can offer,” the Dealmaker told Bolswaithe, motioning with his hand. “Be sure to tell them that.”
“Five minutes with the book in a secure location, and you won't touch it,” Bolswaithe said.
“Twenty, and I don't want to touch it, but someone needs to turn the pages for me,” the Dealmaker replied with a sick grin.
“Ten,” Bolswaithe said.
“Ten is not enough,” the Dealmaker gritted his teeth . “Give me fifteen and I'll agree.”
Bolswaithe typed, then read aloud, “Fifteen, and you can't touch the book or make any copies of the writings, you can only read it.”
“Deal. Before I read the book, I'll tell you what I know about your predicament and who can solve it.” The Dealmaker extended a hand toward Thomas with a crooked smile. Thomas grimaced at his moldy fingernails and glistening palm. “Yes or no, Cypher?”
Thomas hesitated, then shook his clammy and cold hand. The long fingers wrapped around his palm, and as Thomas let go, strands of a black substance appeared on his palm and then were absorbed by his skin before he could wipe them off.
“We are partners now, young Thomas,” the Dealmaker said. “Just like Tasha was before you.”
Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) Page 17
