I hit the bottom of the ladder and quickly stepped aside for the others to come down, gazing around warily. We’d landed in what looked to be another mine shaft, with natural stone walls held up by thick wooden timbers, and a track stretching past us into the dark. I shone my flashlight in one direction and saw that it ended in a solid wall of rock and collapsed stone; either from a natural cave-in or one that Talon had orchestrated.
“Well,” I muttered as Garret landed beside me, “at least that makes one choice easier.”
We followed the tracks, taking the only direction that we could. They didn’t go far. Maybe a hundred yards from the ladder, they curved around a bend and ended at a door. And not just any door. A large, thick barrier of solid steel, set into a wall of iron. A keypad glowed green at the edge, though the screen was covered in a film of dust, indicating this had not been used in quite some time.
“Ah,” Mist said, sounding triumphant and awed at the same time. “There’s the high-tech security I was expecting.”
“Can you get us through?” asked Garret.
“I should be able to.” Mist stepped forward, frowning as she approached the massive door. “We’ll see if the codes the Archivist gave me will work.”
“And if they don’t?” Matthews asked.
“Then there will likely be an alarm, and the mission will be a failure,” the Basilisk stated bluntly, making him scowl. “To prevent that, I will need absolute silence to concentrate. So perhaps you could refrain from making any noise until I am finished.”
I bit my cheek to stifle a grin at the real meaning behind her words—please shut up and go away—and took a step back with Garret to give her some room.
“Hope this works,” Tristan muttered, his voice pitched very low. “Otherwise this is going to be a very short mission.”
“If it doesn’t,” I whispered back, “we’ll just have to find another way in. Or we’ll fight our way through the guards when they come.” It didn’t matter how we did it, but we had to get inside to destroy the vessel army. We couldn’t fail. Riley, Martin, the rogues, everyone—they were all out front, fighting and dying to give us this chance.
Fortunately, it was only a few seconds before the door gave a soft beep and clicked as it swung back. Relieved, we started forward, but Mist stood in front of the now-open door, a slight frown on her face as we joined her. Another tunnel, this one made of tile and concrete and lit with overhead lights, curved away past the frame. “Something wrong, Mist?”
Mist shook her head. “I know I got the codes from the Archivist, but…it shouldn’t be this easy,” she murmured. “This is Talon we’re talking about—there’s no such thing as luck.” The Basilisk crossed her arms and glared past the frame. “I don’t like it. It smells like a trap.”
Garret moved up beside me, also peering through the door. “Luck or not, we have to move on,” he said. “We can’t abandon the mission, even if there is a trap waiting for us inside. There’s no choice but to continue.”
Warily, we started down the corridor, following the lights and the piping that ran along the wall. I shivered as I trailed Garret, hugging the wall and feeling highly exposed with all the lights and no cover whatsoever. There were no cameras in the hall, no guards or security. When we came to an intersection, Garret paused, speaking quietly to Wes through the com. After a moment, he nodded and jerked his head down the passage to the right, and we continued.
The hallway ended at another heavy-duty steel door, though this one had a small square window near the top. As we approached, I could see flashing red lights through the glass, and heard the shrill howl of an alarm. Pressing against the frame, Garret and I peeked through the window and saw that the room beyond, though filled with pipes and gauges and strange blocky machines, was empty of people.
“Looks like the assault outside is doing its job,” Tristan muttered, his face lit by the eerie, flashing red lights. “Let’s hope they keep it up.”
I glanced at Garret. “The chamber with the vessels isn’t far, right?”
He shook his head. “According to Wes, it’s directly below this floor. We’ll have to find a way down, either by stairs or elevator.”
I looked through the glass again. Beyond the window, a man in a white coat rushed past the door, looking panicked or in a hurry. A couple of armed guards followed him as the alarm continued to blare and the lights flickered on and off, adding to the chaos.
Riley, I thought. I hope you’re okay. Wherever you are, keep it up for just a little while longer.
“Wes,” Garret said into the com. “Find us a way down. Once we’re through this room, we can’t stop for directions. Just get us there as quickly as you can.” He paused another few heartbeats, then nodded. “Understood. Heading there now.”
He looked at me, and I took a deep breath. Together, we pulled the door open and slipped into the flashing, blaring chaos of the lab.
We hurried through the halls of the laboratory as swiftly and quietly as we could, passing rooms of shelves, counters and strange equipment, going deeper into the lab. The lights and alarms continued to sound, and after a few minutes, I started to feel a headache throb behind my eyes. We saw very few people on our way through the corridors, and the ones we did see were either running away or huddled in a room, looking confused and scared. We didn’t slow down. Garret led us through twisting hallways and narrow corridors without hesitation, following instructions from Wes. Once, we turned a corner and ran into a trio of guards, who shouted and raised their weapons, but were swiftly gunned down by the soldiers before they could respond further. Another time, a pair of humans in white coats barged out of a room, nearly running into us, and rushed off down the hall without looking in our direction. Peter Matthews raised his gun to shoot them in the back, but was stopped by Garret’s sharp order to stand down.
After several tense minutes, we turned another corner and came to the end of the hallway. A pair of elevator doors stood in front of us, open and blinking red inside.
Mist balked when she saw what lay at the end of the hall. “I really don’t like the idea of using the elevator,” she remarked, gazing at the metal box with suspicion. “It might not even work, now that the alarms have sounded. Can we find a staircase?”
“Not according to Wes,” Garret told her. “The nearest staircase is on the other side of the laboratory. But this will take us to the lowest floor and will be the closest point to the target room.” Shouts echoed down the hall, making us all jerk up, and Garret’s jaw tightened. “There’s no time for anything else. Let’s move.”
We crowded into the elevator, and Garret slammed his thumb into the button for the last floor. The doors hissed shut, cutting off the alarms and flashing lights, and the elevator started to descend.
I forced myself to breathe, tried to calm my pounding heartbeat. Almost there. Almost to our destination, the room that held Talon’s vessel army, hundreds, maybe thousands, of Adult dragon clones. I felt the weight of my pack on my shoulders, the bag that held a scary amount of explosives, enough to collapse a room by itself. Garret, Tristan, Peter Matthews, they all carried the same in their own packs, but would it be enough? Could we really destroy that massive army, make it so they could never rise to threaten the world? And, if we did, how many more lives would be taken when the lab went down? I thought of the scientists we’d passed on our way here, the humans who would be trapped in this laboratory when everything detonated. They would all be killed, along with any dragon who happened to be here when the explosives went off.
This is war, Ember. The elevator came to a smooth halt at the bottom of the shaft. If we don’t stop Talon now, the fighting will never be over. You know this has to be done.
I set my jaw and took a deep breath, gathering my resolve, as the elevator doors hissed and slid back.
Revealing Dante’s smiling face on the other side. And a dozen armed human vessels behind him, all pointing guns into the elevator.