Chapter 17 - The Blood Adit
Gunfire ripped through the clearing like a swarm of angry hornets.
The crack of suppressed sniper fire sounded like dry twigs snapping, but where the high-velocity rounds struck, the hemlock trunks exploded into jagged wooden shrapnel. A round punched through the dirt lip of the mine shaft six inches from Vanessa’s hip, showering her in cold mud.
Daniel grabbed her by the shoulder, shoving her down into the black throat of the shaft, and dropped in behind her just as a burst of automatic fire chewed the corrugated iron opening into twisted ribbons.
Above them, through the darkness of the vertical drop, they heard the deafening roar of Marcus’s shotgun firing two more times, followed by the wet, sickening thud of a body collapsing into the brush, and then—silence.
"Down! Keep going down!" Daniel shouted into the blackness.
The air in the shaft was freezing, heavy with the stench of stagnant sulfur, rotted wood, and wet iron ore. Daniel flicked on the small tactical flashlight mounted to his submachine gun. The white beam cut through the thick subterranean mist, revealing an ancient timber-reinforced drift that sloped steeply downward into the belly of the mountain.
Vanessa was ahead of him, half-sliding down the wet rock on her backside, her arms locked securely around Rowan and Maya, who were both screaming now in raw, unbridled terror. Ethan was scrambling on hands and knees between them, sobbing, his small fingers caked in black grease and mud.
"I can't see the bottom, Daniel!" Vanessa cried, her voice echoing frantically down the stone tunnel.
"There is no bottom, it’s an incline!" Daniel scrambled down after them, using his boots to brake against the rotted railroad ties embedded in the floor. "Marcus said it drains into the valley! If we hit the drainage adit, it comes out behind the state highway!"
A sharp, mechanical ping echoed from above them.
Daniel turned the light up the shaft.
Climbing down the vertical access ladder with unnatural, terrifying agility was not a mercenary.
It was Clara.
The four-year-old child was descending the rusted rungs with the speed and precision of a hunting spider. Her white coat was gone, replaced by a gray compression suit. Her small hands were covered in tactical grip gloves, and across her chest was strapped a compact, high-intensity flare launcher.
Her face was illuminated by the green glow of a heads-up display visor strapped over her eyes.
"Mother wants the biological units returned," Clara’s voice floated down the shaft—not the voice of a little girl, but an eerily monotone, prerecorded synthesis of Vanessa’s own voice, modulated down into a flat, dead frequency. "Subject Daniel Vance is designated for immediate termination."
"Jesus Christ," Daniel hissed. "She’s not a child. She’s an asset platform."
Clara reached into the pouch at her waist, pulled a silver canister, and dropped it down the shaft.
"Gas! Vanessa, pull your shirts over their faces!" Daniel yelled, lunging forward, scooping Ethan off his feet and throwing him ahead toward Vanessa.
The canister struck the rock ten feet above Daniel and burst—not with CS gas, but with a blinding, magnesium-fueled thermite incendiary that turned the narrow stone corridor into a roaring furnace of white-hot fire and suffocating smoke.
The heat slammed into Daniel’s back like a physical hammer, blistering the skin through his jacket. He stumbled forward, coughing violently, the air burning his throat like lye.
"Daniel, the path splits!" Vanessa’s scream came through the roaring smoke.
The flashlight beam struck a fork in the tunnel ahead. To the left, the tracks continued downward into a flooded, black trench where water lapped against the ceiling. To the right, an iron security gate—modern, reinforced, out of place in a nineteenth-century mine—blocked the passage.
Set into the rock beside the modern iron gate was a backlit digital keypad.
And on the screen of the keypad, flashing in pale, sterile blue, was the corporate logo of Sterling Global.
"It's not an abandoned mine," Daniel choked out, his vision blurring as the toxic smoke from the thermite rolled down the tunnel. "It’s another facility. She didn't chase us into the wilderness... she channeled us into her backup laboratory."
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Behind them, through the wall of white fire, Clara dropped to the stone floor. The child didn't cough. The heat didn't seem to touch her. She stepped through the embers, her visor locked onto Daniel’s chest, raising a compact pneumatic injector with a six-inch surgical needle glistening at the tip.
***
