Blue Words

A Confrontation for the Ages - Part II

At the bottom of the stairs they found themselves in not a room, but an earthen corridor which extended east to west. The passage was carved directly out of the heavy bedrock with tangled arteries of wires and piping snaking along the roof. It was much cooler down there insulated from the blustery night above.

Gudrik led the group towards the eastern end of the tunnel, rounding slightly towards the north. There was a sudden flicker in the lights, flashing long sporadic shadows throughout the cavern. The train halted and George bumped into Gudrik's back. They eyed the fluorescent bulb above them. The light hung bright for a moment, then disappeared completely. Black swarmed in flooding the passage. If not for the faint glow fighting its way down the stairwell they would not have been able to see their hand an inch before their eyes. "Don't suppose that was just coincidence?" smirked Malaki.

"Do we go back?" asked Dorian. George stomped off down the black hall in answer, Gudrik grabbed her shoulder.

"Ami, take the lead with Gudrik, Dorian put George between us, Malaki on rear guard." ordered Kahn. With military precision, the Inscribed obeyed.

"Thought you put them all to sleep?" whispered Malaki.

"So did I," grunted Gudrik, "Anyone not touched by the blood should be out."

The Inscribed flicked on the torches clamped to the barrels of their confiscated rifles and the group continued their exploration. "The lights will give us away in the dark," said Dorian.

"They already know where we are," Gudrik grunted back. The butts of the weapons were pressed firmly to the Inscribed's shoulders as they crept their way through the labyrinth. Small passages broke off along the way and down each one shadow crept and slinked as the torch beams passed.

The first substantial room they found themselves in was a long concrete floored space which was lined with enormous stainless steel tanks. Light sprinkled the walls as the torch beams shone off them. The feeling which had been bubbling within Gudrik since his arrival was now a screeching roar. It was a feeling he had only ever felt once before, a feeling which he had dubbed the urge. It was now clear that this was the same urge he had felt in the lab, but on a much grander scale. There was no question in Gudrik's mind what was in these tanks. Considering the power only a few drops of his blood held, in the wrong hands this stockpile was probably one of the greatest threats which humanity had ever faced.

"We've found the blood store," said Gudrik. Kahn simply nodded in response. He had suspected what the tanks contained, but at the same time prayed he was wrong. There was a pitter patter behind. All the gun barrels swung towards it, but the beams of light hit only emptiness.

"Worry about the blood later, we need to find Tabitha," George reminded them, anxiously walking ahead.

They snaked from room to room, investigating as they went, Malaki creeping backwards panning his light side to side at their black tail, Ami doing the same from the front. The design of the underground level was uniform, but still confusing. A long curving hallway chiselled out of the earth, peppered with smaller off-shoots towards the inside of the arc. Each hall ended in a wider chamber. At the end of each of those chambers was an archway leading into yet another hall. The rooms which the team had passed through by that stage were all lined with tanks. The size of Kyran's stockpile was truly staggering. It soon became disorientating moving through the subterranean cavern and dèjá vu was rife. It felt as though they were circling around, but it was impossible to tell how far around the circle they were. Eventually the creeping snake moved beyond the storage areas and into some larger and much more civilised rooms.

These were lined on the roof and walls and if they didn't know better, the group could have been in any normal surface building. The first two rooms which they passed through were established laboratories, very similar to the ones Gudrik had raided only twenty four hours earlier.