* * * * *
"Why do I end up with Goliath and Peter Pan, that's what I'd like to know," Jackson grumbled to everyone within hearing range―Khan and Jesse, respectively.
Jesse rolled his eyes, trudging along behind. The thick mud sucked loudly around his sinking feet with every step, and he resentfully noted that Jackson's feet weren't even leaving boot prints. Jesse wasn't exactly thrilled about this arrangement either, but when all the decisions had been made twenty minutes earlier, he'd been busy de-twigging his socks.
"Are you seriously still bitching?" he asked. "Shouldn't you be paying more attention to what we're doing here?"
The three of them were moving up a slope alongside the perimeter of the building, which seemed even more mind-bogglingly huge now that they were right up against it. At this juncture, Jackson stopped abruptly so that Jesse would walk right into him, then whipped around. He cocked his head to the side and drew his eyebrows together in a most authoritative manner. "How many fire exits are on the top level of this side of the building?"
Jesse's lips went slack. In lieu of an answer, he flicked his mud-soaked hair behind his ear and stuck his nose in the air.
"Seven. You're welcome. So I'll bitch if I want," Jackson mandated before turning and marching off again. "I'm not responsible for your asses just because I know what I'm doing, that's all I'm saying."
"Oh yes, a firefighter, I forgot," Jesse directed a sigh back to Khan, who was keeping up a silent pace behind him. "Thank heavens."
Khan, of course, didn't respond. Jackson waved his hand urgently and made a shushing sound as they neared the corner of the building. He highlighted the importance of stealth by pressing his back to the wall and hesitating to peer around its edge.
Jesse skipped past him without pause and hopped beyond the corner.
Jackson's eyes popped. A wave of heat pulsed away from Khan, sizzling and popping in the rain. But Jesse smirked and turned around, clearly amused by both of them. "Puh-lease. There's nothing here."
He was entirely right. Around the corner, there was nothing whatsoever. Just a shorter side of the building lined with several large doors, each one big enough for a tractor-trailer to pass through. The door closest to them stood wide open. Nothing moved beyond it, and nothing made a sound over the falling rain.
They approached the door with quiet caution. Even Jesse was silent when they paused there together, at the place where shadow cast a hard line in the mud. The three hesitated on that line as if for the last breath before a dive, and then they walked inside.
For the next several seconds, Jackson and Jesse's eyes strained to adjust. For Khan, this wasn't really an issue. Though barely classifiable as daylight, the dreary glow behind them should have been enough to define a few shapes inside the building. Yet for some reason, the light wasn't doing its job.
After quite a bit of blinking, they understood: there was nothing for the light to fall on.
Decades ago, the gravel had been ground up and cleaned here, then funneled through to the lower level to be shipped away. Now the place was gutted of all machinery, leaving only a vast, open floor which stretched the entire length of the building, a featureless plain of wooden beams and dust as far as the eye could see―which wasn't very far at all. The drenched daylight from the open door succumbed to absolute darkness about forty yards ahead of where they stood. The rest of the level's interior, the full half-mile of it, was utterly untouched by any light source. It looked like the perfect place for a rave. Or like a portal to hell, with no light at the end.
"This is fine," Jackson said, sounding uncharacteristically nervous. "It'll be like spelunking. Without lamps."
Jesse sneered under his breath. He didn't know what spelunking was, but evidently he thought it sounded icky. "Would be nice if Ghi were here."
They both jumped when a glowing gush of heat materialized beside them. Khan, naturally. His right arm went alight with a rippling sleeve of fire, and he held it up like a torch, looking bored but wearily patient.
Jesse forced a smile. "That works, too."
They started forward.
The fire created only a small dome of light around them in the enormous space, not nearly enough to reach the other end of the building. They could, however, make out the distant side walls. They passed the occasional fire exit, but no other doors or walled-off sections. No Hollows. And no Jordan.
A minute or two passed without interruption or incident. Just more and more empty, featureless space ahead. Behind them, the open door floated like a perfect gray rectangle in the distance. All else was blackness beyond their little orange orb of space.
"She can't be up here," said Jackson. His lowered voice went forth into dust and darkness, never returning an echo. "Any word from them yet?"
"No." Jesse was quick to answer. He'd been checking his phone constantly.
"Must be a lot more to look through downstairs." Jackson squinted at the side walls. "There's gotta be stairs or something at the far end of this. We could―"
With an abrupt catch in his voice, Jackson dropped from sight.
In the very same instant, Jesse stopped, flung a halting hand in front of Khan, and swept his other hand up in a rising motion.
Calling all air particles. Someone's fallen down the well.
Jackson tumbled silently upward out of a gigantic hole in the floor, still too surprised to yell. With a withheld sigh of relief, Jesse dropped his hand, and the air obediently dumped Jackson onto solid ground. The entire ordeal, from fall to finish, hadn't lasted two whole seconds.
"Shit." Jackson grimaced and sucked in a breath, physically feeling his mortality. He rolled to his feet and stood beside Jesse, staring down into the depths of the rectangular chute. It had once been used to funnel gravel into trucks on the lower level, some forty feet below. Now it was just an opening to an even deeper darkness than what already surrounded them.
"Thanks," he said graciously.
Jesse's mouth was a hard, nervous line. "Still going to call me Peter Pan?"
Jackson thought about that for a second, and then sighed.
"Yep," he said. Jackson was nothing if not honest.
They continued on for more than twenty minutes, finding nothing noteworthy or hopeful until all at once, something began to come at them from the darkness, taking shape ahead in the faintest outer glow of the flame. A flat, vertical plane. A wall. The end of the line.
The three paused. Without being asked, Khan grumbled and lifted his flaming arm so as to better illuminate the wall from one end to the other. At one corner, the wall recessed into a short alcove, leading to the wide, trap-like door of a freight elevator. The only other feature was a single exit directly in front of them: a metal door with a narrow, thick-paned window, its glass obscured by the dingy film of time.
The stairs.
Jesse rested his hands on his hips. He checked his phone, shook his head. Nothing yet.
"Can't just turn around," Jackson said, scratching his ear. "I reckon we should go on down and meet them in the middle."
Khan exhaled smugly.
Jackson glared up at him, craning his thick neck. "If you got a better idea, Sideshow, then you best say it now."
Whether he had one or not, Khan said nothing. He rolled his eyes. Maybe. It was hard to tell in the firelight.
Vessel, Book I: The Advent Page 57
