Star Road (39 page)

“Wait a second,” Ivan said. “I think I can—”

He cupped his hands to his ears and turned his head back and forth as though trying to locate the origin of whatever the sound was.

“You hear it, too?” Sinjira asked.

Ivan waited, then nodded slowly.

“I think so. Just barely ...”

“I don’t hear anything,” Rodriguez said. “You’re probably just...”

His voice trailed off, and he scrunched up his face as he, too, listened.

Sinjira kept wheeling her head left and right, trying to pinpoint the source of the sound.

Right now it seemed to surround her.

Rising higher.

Turning even more shrill.

She licked her lips, aware of the dry, crusty texture. When she wiped the flat of her hand across her face, she felt something sticky.

She let out a faint groan when she saw the streak of blood on her palm.

No!

The sound was inside her head now. If it didn’t stop soon, it would drive her crazy.

“We have to ... get out of here!” she shouted, surprised by the strength of her voice. “There’s some kind of—”

“The sound’s painful,” Ivan said, shaking his head as if he had water in his ears. “Anyone else hear it?”

Sinjira watched as each of them looked hurt... crippled by the noise.

Suddenly, Ruth doubled over and grabbed her head with both hands. Blood was streaming from both of her nostrils. It glistened darkly in the dim light.

Sinjira looked down at her chip. Still recording, but the levels were all wrong.

“This is going off the scale, way past any UHF. The noise isn’t even close to normal frequencies.”

First Ruth, then Rodriguez fell to their knees, clutching their heads. Ivan came up to Ruth, covering his ears.

“It’s a trap,” he said. “The sound ...”

Like the mirrors with light, only now it was sound.

“We have to get away from it,” Ruth said. Blood ran freely from her nose to the edge of her chin.

By now, everyone was blocking their ears with their hands, but Sinjira could feel the sound still swelling, building up pressure inside her brain.

Covering their ears would do nothing.

This sound could penetrate their skulls.

She looked at the trickle of blood leaking between Jordan’s fingers as he covered his ears.

Ivan walked over and yanked Ruth and Rodriguez to their feet. He started dragging them away, back to the main room, forcing them to run.

Sinjira, with Jordan following, ran after them.

Their footsteps made harsh, hissing sounds in the dust as they ran, sprinting as fast as they could to put as much distance as possible between them and the origin of that high-frequency sound.

How far will we have to get away from it before it won’t affect us?

~ * ~

Ivan ran as fast as he could, dragging Ruth and Rodriguez. Like them, he was nearly immobilized by the sound but kept pushing.

Behind them was Annie, Sinjira, and—finally—Jordan, perhaps bleeding the most, his ears shiny with red blood.

“Ingenious,” Rodriguez said, gasping.

“What’s that?” Ivan said, still pulling him along.

“A hypersonic defense system,” Rodriguez went on. “If we had stayed there much longer, the sound—basically inaudible, like an old-fashioned dog whistle—would have ruptured our blood vessels, maybe even cracked our skulls, made our heads explode.”

“Like what was on the wall,” Sinjira said.

“Yeah. Fucking brilliant,” Annie said, panting as she ran, her fists clenched and pumping like pistons.

“Can you still read it on your chip?” Ivan asked Sinjira.

She nodded and said, “It’s fainter... but still there.”

Ivan thought:
What if there was another trap up ahead?

It could be that the UHF noise hadn’t been designed to kill... only to annoy them and make them run faster, herding them like animals, straight into another trap.

Gotta watch it... be ready.

He was still holding Ruth’s hand, even though they had passed the danger.

As they ran along, he was surprised how good this felt.

Her hand in mine.

As they navigated the twists and turns of the cavern, he checked on Jordan and Annie, his backup.

Both appeared to have recovered, a little anyway, although Jordan’s neck was streaked with blood.

Have to be ready for whatever’s ahead.

Then ... he tensed when, up ahead, he saw that the cavern looked like it had come to an end.

A dead end... or worse?

He slowed his pace, and Ruth, breathing heavily behind him, slowed down as well. Even when they stopped, Ivan noticed how neither of them let go of the other’s hand.

The cavern narrowed down, and there was a wall of blackness ahead.

“Hold up!” he shouted, and now—finally—he reluctantly let go of Ruth’s hand.

Sinjira and the rest of them came to a halt.

“What is it?” Annie asked.

“Dead end. Maybe,” Ivan said.

Up ahead, he saw a dark entryway, blocked by three huge stones, stacked one on top of the other ... like stairs.

At the top, a platform.

Ivan approached the opening, staring into the darkness beyond. Jordan came up beside him and lit a flare.

“Looks like it drops off on the other side,” Ivan said. “I wish we still had a flashlight that worked.”

Ivan climbed the three large stone steps to the top of the platform. Once he was at the top, he looked down.

And saw nothing but darkness.

“Shit.”

“What is it?” Jordan asked, striding up the stairs behind him. They both peered down into what might as well have been a bottomless pit.

“Too dark even for the goggles.”

“Totally black.”

“Got another flare?” Ivan asked.

Without a word, Jordan slung his backpack off and opened the top flap.

“Only a few left,” the gunner said.

As Jordan took out a flare, Ivan asked, “How many?”

“Seven ... counting this one.”

Ivan nodded, thinking.

Jordan took out three flares and handed them to Ivan.

“Share and share alike.”

“Thanks,” Ivan said as he slipped them into his backpack and zipped it shut.

He watched as Jordan struck the second flare and held it above his head. The sputtering red glow filled the cavern as sparks spilled to the floor and a thick billow of smoke rose to the dark reaches of the cave ceiling. How far up it went was anyone’s guess.

The sudden brightness momentarily blinded Ivan, but when he looked down, he could see ...

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said as he and Jordan stared down at the long flight of stone steps spiraling down into the depths below.

Ivan looked back at the others and called out. “There’s a stairway. We have to go down.”

Is that all this is?
he wondered.

He took the first step down, placing his foot solidly on the wide stone.

And in an instant, it disappeared ... like a light winking off.

Thrown off balance, Ivan lurched forward and began to fall.

~ * ~

38

THE STEPS

As
Ivan’s momentum carried him
forward, Ruth let out a piercing scream and Jordan dove forward. He missed Ivan’s arm, but his fingers snagged his jacket collar.

It wasn’t much ...

But it was enough.

Ivan twisted around to face Jordan. His arms shot up and out as his hands and forearms slapped the top edge of the cave floor. Grit from the cave floor rained down into his face.

For a few seconds—seconds that seemed like minutes—he dangled with his legs kicking freely in empty space.

He grunted, looking up at Jordan and Ruth and the others.

“Uh ... a little help here’d be nice?” he said, his breath puffing hard with the effort of hanging on.

Jordan held the flare high so Annie and Rodriguez could see what they were doing as they knelt down on either side of Ivan and got a good grip on him. Hands wedged under his armpits, they lifted him up, dragging him slowly until his knees scraped against the cave floor.

“Thanks,” he said, panting from the effort as he straightened up and brushed himself off.

He noticed the blood still leaking from Ruth’s ear and reached out to touch her on the shoulder.

“You all right?” he asked.

A quick nod. Ivan turned to face the others.

“Okay. Want my guess about what’s going on here?”

For a moment, they stood there quiet. Stumped. Then: “It’s another part of the defense system.”

“Defense system?” Annie echoed, moving close.

“I mean, this is all a deadly game for someone.”

“Your brother, you mean,” Jordan said.

“No doubt he’s enjoying it. But I don’t think he had anything to do with making any of this. It’s too ingenious. And my guess—probably alien.”

Ivan looked around.

“Kyros must have found this place and now he’s using it against us. And whoever made these traps was sure as hell protecting something pretty damn important.”

“And each part of it,” Annie said, “is luring us deeper in—”

“If it doesn’t kill us first,” Jordan said.

“Yeah,” Ivan said. “Designed to kill any interlopers. Like us. That is, unless we can figure out the traps.”

“So it’s like a test?” Ruth said quietly.

The flare sputtering in Jordan’s hand tossed red sparks onto the dirt floor.

“Pass the tests, and it drives us deeper and deeper into the cave,” Ivan said. “And I suspect whatever’s down here that’s valuable my brother has already found.”

He looked at Annie. She’d been unshakeable as far as he had seen so far.

Now? Her face was set, grim.

Stay with me,
he thought.

“W-we should stop then,” Rodriguez said. “I am
not
going to be herded like an animal to the slaughter. I say we go back.”

Ivan turned on him, hoping to make it perfectly clear.

There is no going back. No turning around.

“I say we get out of here while we can,” Rodriguez continued. “We can find some other way to deal with your brother if he’s even down here.”

Ivan tensed, resisting the temptation to punch him.

“Oh, he’s down here all right,” he said.

Will the doc get the hint to shut the fuck up before he freaks everyone out?

“You think you get to call the shots, Doc?” Ivan kept his voice low, commanding. And Rodriguez took a quick step back. His expression froze as he looked around searching for support from someone ... anyone.

“What?” he said. “You all want to die down here?” He pointed at the stairway. “If we had panicked and been running away from that UHF, not being careful, not looking where we were going, we would all have gone off the edge when we reached these steps.”

“Are you about done?” Ivan said, taking a step closer.

“Easy there, Ivan,” Jordan said.

“That room back there.” Rodriguez’s face flushed. “That stuff that was stuck on the walls? You know what it was, right?”

Before anyone could answer, he finished it for them.

“It’s whatever was left of whoever came down here. That high sonic frequency shattered their skulls. And it would have done the same to us if we hadn’t run.”

“No one’s dead,” Ivan said.

He looked around, taking the temperature of the group.

“Not yet!”

“It’s talk like that that’ll get us killed. Fear, Doctor. Trust me. Fear kills.”

And Rodriguez definitely looked afraid when Ivan stepped closer.

Rodriguez looked at Annie, as if expecting her to back him up, protect him.

“I say we put it to a vote,” he said.

Before he could finish, Ivan backhanded him across the mouth, a hard, loud smack that drew blood.

“Leave if you want, Doc,” Ivan said softly, evenly. “But I say we’re safer if we stick together.”

Wiping blood away with the back of his hand, Rodriguez looked at Annie.

“And you’re going to just stand there and let him treat one of your passengers like this?”

Annie glanced at Ivan. Then shook her head.

“You’re not my responsibility anymore, so”—a shrug—”I’m fine with letting Ivan
and
Jordan take command.”

Ivan cocked an eyebrow at her.

Jordan, too? When did I say anything about Jordan being in charge?
he wanted to ask but didn’t.

“Okay,” Ivan said. “It’s decided, then. We have to calm the fuck down and figure this out.”