The Fifth Descent of Lexi Montaigne

by R. S. Darling

  She tried not to think about it, grateful that Lewis quietly endured the operatic portions of Beethoven’s choral finale. Thoughts drifted.

  If I cry now, I’ll never stop.

  Iowa passed into a nightmare better left forgotten. Next up: Nebraska. The sun climbed to the roof of the world and hung there for hours. It was still shining when, in the heart of the Cornhusker State, they stopped for gas and restrooms. Despite the beaming sun, the dread hopelessness was not dispelled.

  The only words exchanged for one-hundred miles were: Do want me to fill it up? Do you need a break from driving? Are we dead yet?

  She suspected he was on to her with the whole ‘Vortex thing’ but that like her he had no choice but to continue feigning ignorance. As she took Exit 102 onto the 76 into Colorado, Lewis broke the word-fast with, “I didn’t think you had it in you.” It was neither an accusation nor a question, just a simple, painful statement.

  “I’m more familiar with blades than you think. FBI files don’t tell everything,” stunning herself with the cold absolute nature of the words. She was changing, and it scared her. What would she be in this new state? What, if she survived the Tower in Arfion? Would there be anything left of Lexi Montaigne?

  My God, I killed a man.

  Lewis stopped at a Sporting Goods store in Boulder, bought them both parkas and gloves. The Dakota started squeaking when they tried to leave. It was a squelching sound like a mouse caught in a trap and it silenced only on left turns. “Sounds like the lower ball joint,” Lewis suggested. “Passenger side.”

  “We don’t have time to fix it. We have to be in Arfion by Tuesday.”

  “I know,” Lewis whispered. “It’s a pisser to be sure, but a busted ball joint doesn’t take long to fix.” He found an Auto Zone on Broadway Street. While he was inside Lexi searched Gramps’ trove file, looking for any references to Colorado, recalling Gramps’ conviction that Dorl had once run a factory in the Rockies.

  There was nothing. She inserted Vortex’s drive and learned that the Tower had been in this very city sometime in 2009. Is that what Gramps meant, she wondered, that Dorl had been here in ’09? But that couldn’t be; Gramps had been telling stories about a facility in the Rockies since she was in grade school. Had Dorl returned to one of his old haunts?

  She pulled up the location; a stone structure built somewhere off South Boulder Road between 36 and Paragon Estates.

  That was Vortex’ most educated guess, anyway.

  Lexi attached a leash to Satan and set off for the site, leaving a note for Lewis but erasing her history and taking the flash drive. It wasn’t until after crossing the 36 that it occurred to her that Lewis had said ‘I know’.

  She stopped, yanking Satan’s leash taut. “He knows why we need to be in Arfion by Tuesday. But how?” looking back as though expecting him to come barreling down the road at any moment. It’s a trap, the dungeon warned. Run!

  But she was too close to discovering the Tower’s pattern to cut and run, and too knowledgeable and painfully experienced by now to believe that safety was to be found anywhere. The cat trailed behind on the jog down South Boulder Road. Lexi panted on reaching Paragon Estates.

  Nothing here but trees and a few ranch houses. “Another dead end. Dammit!”

  As her breathing slowed she scanned the surroundings. There, about four hundred yards into the densest part of the forest, a single smokestack protruded from the tree line horizon like a jack-in-the-box. “Come on, kitty-boy. Want to see a squirrel? Huh?”

  Satan seemed more interested in sniffing pine cones, but he was on a leash and didn’t really have a choice in the matter. Lexi plunged into the green unknown, dragging the tuxedo cat behind her and casting glances over her shoulder. She ran headlong down the slope into the forest. It wasn’t just the ever-present threat of the FBI, but the portent of the police.

  And rightly so. Your punishment was hardly sufficient for so grave a crime. “I know,” she confessed to the Colorado Lark Bunting twittering overhead.

  Pine needles slapped her face and scraped the warm parka as she pursued her quarry. The air possessed a sharper twinge here among the ponderosa pines, a bite that pierced exposed flesh, air that stole breath from lungs. Satan complained of the pace in soft mewling noises but Lexi could see the structure ahead, the red brick forming an impenetrable wall in the middle of the forest.

  Fragmentary pictures of being led to another structure while flanked by two—no three—agents attacked her thoughts. The severity of this memory tore loose what was left of her oxygen and Lexi collapsed, gasping as the lingering dose of Lot 111 in her system did its job.

  Instead of fighting it she relented and immersed herself in the images and the chemicals, sinking willingly for the first time into the fearful world of her past. The revelation that came as she lay on the forest floor was startling. She saw the DeLorean-haired woman and the driver to her left, with Lewis under his trilby to her extreme left. Blinding light swallowed their forms. Blackness darker and denser than anything natural blocked the other half of the memory.

  Footsteps interrupted the revelation.

  Lexi crawled behind a wide pine still bleeding sap. The footsteps ceased and interminable minutes passed while Lexi summoned the courage to come out of hiding and reconvene the march to the factory. Cotton soft breath clouds lingered in her wake as her pace quickened.

  The steps returned. Faster now. Someone was definitely chasing her.

  The cat would slow her down. She released Satan, wincing inwardly for the loss she knew would be permanent. The chilling fingers of panic crawled up her back at the thought of the final straw, of losing her last friend.

  For this? You would cry for this when the world is on the verge?

  “Yes!” she had not meant to scream, and laughed for the madness of the outburst.

  The sounds from her pursuer abruptly ceased. Lexi waited, listened. With a ‘ah crap’ she took off again. Running in the midst of a Colorado forest. How’d I get here? She paused five minutes later to catch her breath and to appreciate the spell of a Rocky Mountain sunrise peaking though pine branches. Beneath her jeans she felt the warmth of fresh blood trickling. She stuck her hand beneath the parka to feel the inevitable spill of blood below her left breast. The wound underneath had opened during her violent running, and pained her more than anything else, but until now she had born it with gusto.

  Her hand came away almost covered in blood. Vision blurred. Lexi sat down to prevent a feinting spell.

  When she opened her eyes again Lexi realized that she as sitting in the shadow of the red brick structure. She stood and walked up to it. Tracing the wall and ignoring the bloodstain left behind, she found a door unlocked on the southern face. The hinges were silent as she yanked on the door and opened it.

  Her footsteps echoed in the rafters high overhead as she crossed the open floor. She shielded her eyes against attenuated sunlight streaming through dusty windows. The north wall was lined with white tanks declaring their purpose in large yellow stickers: PROPANE.

  She tapped them and stood back as a dense twang answered her query. “Why would he leave them full?” The timber-frame structure still boasted a complex network of silvery pipes twenty-five feet up, and stout wood beams supporting copper lines of gas and air gave the place a tasteful, if anachronistic feel.

  But the presence of the tanks was unsettling, ominous even as it seemed out of character for the usually fastidious Dorl. As she looked at dust motes dancing in the morning sunbeams, at the array of tanks and cylinders, something rustled from the other side of the structure.

  Lexi swiveled on her heels, saw nothing. The scuffling recurred. She hid behind a tank labeled ACETYLENE. Quiet footsteps announced the coming of the man who would kill her.

  But his steps were soon joined by another set, and then the door flew open. She ran for the rooms on the eastern wall, practically flying through the door with the sound of three pairs of footsteps increasing their pace in her wake. On re
aching the rooms, she dove inside, locked the door and clutched her head. A memory struck: Gramps’ notes mentioned the appearance of men under trilbies in every city he searched. What had he written about them? ‘They are chameleons, the ones who hide and gather intel. I struggled with one in Maryland. He had no identification. They are not FBI.’

  She blinked to dispel the memory and peeked through the crack at the edge of the door. Two men and one woman were coming for her, but they wore neither trilbies nor black suits. Chameleons. What did it mean and who were they if not agents?

  As she crawled to the back of the room, dust bunnies puffed up and died in brief bursts. One step, two, they were at the door, trying the locked handle while she climbed the spiral staircase. Five steps, six, they picked it. Why weren’t they shouldering through it? It was just a thin interior panel with no deadbolt. Nine steps, ten; the lock clicked.

  Damn they’re fast.

  Lexi humped over the edge onto the mezzanine, her pant leg oozing blood. A bank of windows looked out on the factory floor. No sunlight penetrated them though, for they were I-see-you-but-you-can’t-see-me interrogation room mirrors.

  One of the chameleons began to climb the spiral staircase, his steps loud, resolute. He was almost to the top. Lexi scrambled in search of a weapon, preferably something light and long to keep her distance. Anger replaced fear as she found nothing and still he came. A fourth set of footsteps announced a new player below.

  On her knees Lexi gazed through the window, down at the latest player. It was Lewis, his oversized gun withdrawn and aimed at the empty space before him. The man on the stairs stopped, seemingly in thought. There were hushed voices, strangled whispers, followed by the rattling sound of the man descending. The click of safety’s preceded the sliding clatter of bullets being chambered.

  In vain Lexi began slamming the mirror to warn Lewis.

  Seconds later bullets rifled the air, their sharp reports filling the building with echoing threats of death. The first trilby chameleon fell with a terrific thud, a face-plant onto the concrete floor. More shots scythed through the space below.

  Lewis volleyed with his own weapon, and all hell broke loose. It was a pisser to be sure.

  Chapter 28

  Indifference is preferable to pain; at least, that’s what ran through Lexi’s mind in that blink of a moment when her world exploded.

  Lewis had been shot. Lewis the supposed agent—the supposedly rogue agent—the possible SCIA operative in deep cover. Instead of screaming she felt only the compulsion to escape, to survive.

  She eyed the door behind Lewis even as he fell. Wondered if in the chaos she could remain undetected. It seemed a long shot and soon not even an option: Lewis managed to discharge his .38 while falling. His final shot struck the woman in plainclothes dead center in her chest. She thudded to the concrete. Lewis crawled awkwardly for the door, leaving a small vivid trail of blood.

  Sections of floor exploded before him, spurting up into his face and prompting the man under the fedora to reach around and fire blind.

  One bullet veered to the last man’s right, causing an eruption of glass that splintered out over the cold gray floor. Lewis hid behind a supporting post as he switched clips. Reloaded, he fired blind again, not even bothering to look around the post. Either miraculously lucky or impossibly gifted, Lewis’ bullet struck the man in the knee as he was scurrying away. This final chameleon clutched his bleeding limb, the north wall as backdrop.

  Lexi pounded on the glass as she watched Lewis turn now to take aim. The kill shot.

  “The tanks are full!”

  Deaf to her warning, Lewis fired. The bullet sank deep into the stitching of a wooden beam. The next shot pinged into the propane tank. The cauldron ignited, it seemed to Lexi on the mezzanine, before the report of the gun. The bank of windows shattered into a million deadly shards, glittering and reflecting an amalgam of sun and fire.

  As she fled to the back wall and crouched into a fetal position Lexi wondered if this was what it was like in hell. The wooden window frames, now glassless, transformed into a barricade of flames. Lexi shook off shards of glass, crawled to the stairs. Adrenaline broiled inside. The rough cast iron steps felt like ingots fresh from the kiln, while the railing was a rod of molten steel.

  Lexi tumbled down the last few steps. Her knees absorbed stray splinters of one way glass, igniting a series of furious yelps of agony.

  Priorities, crybaby!

  Biting back pain and screams, she gazed through smoke and flame and sunlight and saw that the door was not only open but gone, no more now than tattered splinters. Her pack still hung on her back, the laptop unharmed—she hoped and prayed. She ran through the extra wide doorway, cringing away from stray flames and hacking on acrid yellow smoke.

  Something crashed overhead in an explosion of wood and iron and glass. She looked back while diving forward and, through the haze, saw the loft careening down, timbers aflame.

  Running, she dove forward to avoid this latest attack. With a final scream of splitting timber and cracking iron, the loft caved in on itself. The death moans of a man sounded nearby. Lexi crawled over, realizing it was Lewis. He lay beneath a support beam.

  “Help me,” his plea was pathetic for the absence of his once commanding tone. Blood, dark and thick oozed down his ebony face. They both looked as the chameleon woman crawled out of the wreckage, tossing aside flotsam of wall window. She must’ve been wearing Kevlar. Impossibly the trilby lingered atop her head. “Don’t leave me to her,” Lewis pleaded. “She’s one of his!”

  Of course, Dorl’s people don’t kill, they use Lot 111. They would take from Lewis all that he had left. What is a man without his memories?

  Even as Lewis groveled, Lexi pictured herself reaching for the keys snapped to the loop on his jeans. His gun lay a few feet away. She watched—detached—in what she knew was a dissociated state, her hands retrieving the keys and gun. Her breathing was erratic, undisciplined and yet she felt that this was right. With Lewis out of the picture she could run, maybe even avoid the Bureau or the Company or whoever the hell was chasing her.

  “You were no friend,” she spat. “You were leading me as a lamb to the slaughter!” She turned and ran, trying not to hear him as he yelled over the explosion of another tank.

  “You were right about the files being wrong!” Lewis screamed. “They didn’t say you were a monster. Miss Montaigne!”

  “Shut up,” she ran. Tried to ignore that part of her that wanted to go back, needed to go back to prove him wrong. The chameleon woman would be free by now, probably armed as well; plus, Lewis was manipulating her. The dungeon was eerily silent. Why doesn’t it agree?

  Because I am the dungeon. I am a monster.

  She breathed a sigh of relief for the dissociated state, for the fact that she didn’t have to face this terrible truth, didn’t have to bare her soul to the world.

  Outside the sun was shining. As if nothing untoward had even happened. The sky was a vast blue canvas. In fact, the only object marring its perfection was Wormwood; the white and orange corona of the comet hung like a faint aurora in the heavens. It’s coming.

  Lexi took a minute to look away from the sky and from Wormwood and to catch her breath. Five people had entered a building in the woods. One had left. “Why me?” She couldn’t afford to think such thoughts, to ponder the cause and effect of the unknowable, of things too great for mere humans to comprehend.

  “Too much,” she muttered. Then, as if gaining energy, she shouted, “It’s too much!” And then she began the trek back to the road, inspecting bushes and trees for any sign of Satan. But he was gone. Like everyone else.

  The whoosh of cars speeding by reached her ears. On their way to happy places, Lexi mused. She shook her head and gave a little chortle, mad for its suddenness and startling for its mere existence. The world has not changed, and neither have I.

  But you have.

  The Dakota sat lean and glorious, waiting for her just on the o
ther side of the tree line. She jogged the last twenty meters, the sight of the truck inspiring her, perhaps. At the top of the hill she pushed herself, giving a final exhausting lurch over the escarpment. Handfuls of dirt fell in tiny avalanches in her wake.

  Drained of energy, Lexi slid her dirty shaking hands over its bed, enjoying the smooth surface beneath the pads of her fingers, the undeniable reality of its existence. This was no memory or vision or nightmare. This was cold hard steel that would take her wherever she wished. She slid into the cab, into her seat, where she belonged. The fit was like an embryo in an egg; the concave back hugging her narrow shoulders, the seat shaping itself to receive her rear in gentle folds and caresses.

  It started instantly. Because it had been sitting in the sun, she knew. She turned back to head for the I-76, noticing, despite fatigue, that the squeal was gone. “Thank you, Lewis.”

  Dakota drove ten over the limit, even before reaching the interstate, desperate to put that blasted Colorado behind her. Her joints felt better, no more painful bouncing. No more annoying clattering in her nether region either. That dark man had fixed her up nice as nice.

  Lexi was convinced that what had happened back there was an impromptu meeting of two factions. Either that or a deal had not gone down proper like. Regardless, it didn’t matter now. She didn’t want to burden herself anymore with the complexities of government agencies.

  It was just her now, her and Gramps’ trove and Vortex’s compendium of stolen files. No more distractions, no more traps. She would find a pattern and thereby a way to destroy Dorl.

  Miles flew by one yellow stripe at a time. To pass the hours she listened to the radio. There were probably less depressing ways to occupy her mind. She found IROC News thank you Sirius satellite. Trepidation speckled Alison Van Deusen’s voice, replacing her customary tones of excitement. She declared, in almost muted tones: ‘On Wednesday NASA officials gave warning to India and Myanmar, stating that Wormwood is on a trajectory for their coordinates. It was hoped that whatever percent of Wormwood didn’t burn in the atmosphere would land in the Bay of Bengal, but Indian and Myanmarists are warned to be prepared to evacuate by Sunday.’