The Vanguard Vixen

Reunion and Reformation (Two)

"The tunnels change?" Turana was surprised. She spun to face ET. "You didn't tell me the tunnels move."

He didn't look surprised. "You didn't ask."

"How was I supposed to know to ask whether the tunnels change?" She crossed her arms. "Is that something that normally happens?"

ET looked to Dr Lukas, who shrugged. "Okay, I should have told you," he breathed. "In my defense though, I adjusted our direction each time they changed."

Lewis scoffed and waved the map in ET's face. "There's a labyrinth of tunnels down here. There is no way you can keep going the right way."

"It's actually pretty easy." The mercenary replied. Turana asked him to elaborate.

He snatched the map from Lewis and laid it down. "There are five tunnels coming in from each of the four directions, North, East, South and West." He pointed out each one as he mentioned it.

"In each particular side, the tunnels are coded with the directional letter and a number," ET pointed out a large print on the tunnel behind where Lewis' friends were that read E3.

"We know." Lewis retorted.

Turana hadn't even noticed the markings were there.

"Okay," ET continued. "First rule, all tunnels are connected."

"That's obvious," Lewis murmured. Turana lightly punched his shoulder.

"Behave."

"Thank you, Turana," ET said. "But here's the catch. There are midway points between where the tunnels meet, and this is where other tunnels, unmarked, branch off," Sure enough, on the map, there were no tunnels in between the main ones. But ET pointed back to where Turana and Zhirkov had run through. "That's one of them. And if you were to move back, you would find that these unmarked tunnels have three-way junctions."

"Okay," Turana encouraged. "So how do they change?"

"The three-way tunnels are actually four-way, only that at any particular time, a door covers one of the four. It's the door that is controlled, so as to move the open ends."

Turana remembered something.

"Oh yes," she looked up at Zhirkov. "It's why the steel bars were going through that wall, you know when they were being shot at us." She ended with a sharp look at Lewis.

He smiled sheepishly. "That was our star archer, Artemis. I told her to shoot at anything that moves."

"That's me!" Shouted a woman who sat by another of the steel bar shooting machines. A large pair of silver star-shaped earrings glinted on her ears. Turana glared at her, and she waved back.

"Well she isn't very good at it," Turana told Lewis but spoke loud enough that Artemis could hear. "She couldn't even hit a stationary target."

Artemis shouted a comeback before Lewis could. "He told me to shoot at, not shoot down. The aim was to scare away anything else in the tunnels. Girl, if I wanted to shoot you I could do it with my eyes closed."

As if to demonstrate, Artemis closed her eyes and pulled the lever on the machine. A steel bar whizzed past Turana's ear and hit the top of the tunnel. She leaned an elbow on the machine, supporting her head with her hand and then she wiggled her eyebrows at Turana.
"See, so easy."

Turana grabbed a gun from a nearby mercenary. Lewis got up to intervene, but she had already pulled the trigger. Artemis yelped in pain, clutching a hand to her ear. Her curses filled the tunnel, a mix of English and Prussian.

Lewis took the gun from Turana. "I'll hold on to this for now."

He went to check on Artemis, and her ear was bleeding where the bullet had taken with it an earring, cutting through the flesh in the process. She barked something in Prussian.

"I don't understand what that means," Lewis told her.

"I am going to kill that bitch." Turana translated, then snapped back at Artemis, also in Prussian. Lewis looked exasperated and raised a hand towards Zhirkov.

Zhirkov on the other hand, was staring daggers at Turana. When he spoke, it was also in Prussian. Lewis raised both hands in submission and focused on Artemis.

"All this time, you could speak Prussian?" Zhirkov asked.

"Of course," shrugged Turana. She replied in English. "You told me you knew Colonel Turana, so I thought you knew that she could speak Prussian. I also did tell you that everything she knows, I know. "

ET nodded. "She did tell you that Zhirkov."

Zhirkov raised a finger. "I am not speaking English again."

ET spoke once more. "You just did."

Zhirkov said something to ET in Prussian that made even Artemis wince. ET's gaze snapped from Turana to Artemis.

"What did he say?"

Turana patted his shoulder, her eyes fixed on the retreating form of Zhirkov. "It's nothing anyone has to hear. I am going to go beat some sense into him."

Lewis passed the wad of cotton to Artemis and wanted to go stop Turana, who was shouting after a disgruntled Zhirkov in Prussian, but Artemis held him back.

"She has to do this. If she wins, it teaches him a lesson, not to say such things to people like him anymore." She nodded towards ET. "And look at the bright side, if he beats her, it's a win-win."

"How is that a bright side? Or a win-win?" He asked Artemis.

She sighed. "Okay, there is no bright side," she rolled her eyes. "But he can't get away with this, and she is the only one who can make him apologise."

The doctor had pulled ET aside and must have told him what Zhirkov had said because he looked very distressed. Lewis went over to the young mercenary.

"Hey," he snapped his fingers at ET. "Forget about that. I had one more question about the tunnel thing."

ET's attention was immediately shifted. "What?"

Lewis pointed down at the map. "What stops us from just going straight through the middle of the main tunnels aren't the ones changing?"

"Who said the main tunnels aren't changing?" ET asked.

Just as he did, a massive door dropped down behind the mercenaries.

Turana and Zhirkov were trapped on the other side.

*****
Phew...
Took me a bit of time to correlate the location and Turana's movement. And the tunnel network.

Thanks for reading.

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