Soldier (Talon, #3)(28)
“So we won’t be able to see what this place really is.”
“Not here,” I agreed. This was just the front, to keep up appearances. I glanced down a corridor that snaked off into the darkness. “We’ll have to go deeper if we want to find what they’ve really been up to.”
As I suspected, the first floor held nothing interesting. Ember and I passed offices filled with desks and chairs and models of prosthetic limbs sitting on display. Like they were trying overly hard to appear legit, that everything here was as it seemed. As we went farther into the building, however, I began to notice the inconsistencies.
There were no computers, anywhere, in the rooms. No security cameras in the halls. No files scattered among the brochures and envelopes on the ground. Anything that would hold any bit of information concerning the building or the business was gone. And I realized why the grounds out front had been completely empty.
“This place has been cleaned,” I said.
“Oh?” Wes said in my ear, sounding wary. “Well, that’s bloody suspicious. Not surprising, though, considering this is a Talon business.”
Ember glanced at me, frowning. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Talon has erased all the information regarding this facility,” I replied. “Computers, files, even the security cameras. Anything that showed what went on here has been stripped and taken away or destroyed.”
Her eyes gleamed in the dim light, and she gave a thoughtful nod. “Which means they’re definitely hiding something.”
“Yeah,” I growled. “Let’s keep searching.”
We continued farther into the building, passing more of the same. Silent, abandoned rooms and darkness. None of the elevators worked, but through a pair of doors that read Employees Only Beyond This Point, a flight of metal stairs led down into the unknown.
Motioning Ember to stop, I stepped back into the hall. “Wes,” I said, “we found the stairs down. Everything still okay out there?”
“Pretty much,” was the terse reply. “I still don’t like this, Riley, have I mentioned that before? Poking around Talon’s territory is always risky, even if this place is abandoned. You two almost done in there?”
“Almost. Nothing interesting up top, but I want to keep searching.” Opening the door again, I peered down the stairwell, seeing it vanish into the dark. “If Talon is hiding something here, it won’t be out in the open,” I said, my voice echoing down the shaft. “We’re heading to the lower floors now. Just keep watching the building.”
“Roger that,” Wes sighed, and I stepped into the stairwell and turned on my flashlight.
Ember followed, our footsteps thumping against the metal steps and reverberating up the shaft. About halfway down, Wes’s voice started to sputter, and by the time we reached the bottom, it had flickered out entirely.
“Great,” I muttered. “Wes, you there? Can you hear me?” No answer, just the continuous sound of static. I looked over at Ember and frowned. “Signal cut out,” I told her. “I lost Wes. Looks like it’s just us now.”
She blinked. “Should we go back?”
“No.” I glanced at the door that marked the end of the stairway. “I want to see what this place is,” I said firmly. “If this was the facility at some point, I want to learn as much as I can. Anything to help me find the current one. Come on.”
The door at the bottom of the steps was metal and a touch pad hung beside the frame, a final security measure against interlopers. But the screen was dark, and the handle turned easily under my palm as I wrenched it down. Shoving the door back, I stepped through the frame and shone the flashlight beam into the room.
For a moment, as the faint light scuttled over the walls and floor, I could only stare, the pit of my stomach coiling like a frightened snake. I didn’t know what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t this.
“What the hell?” I whispered.
EMBER
Okay, I was definitely creeped out here.
Too many horror flicks when I was growing up, I supposed. When I was about thirteen, I went through a phase where I was addicted to ghost and monster movies. Freddy, Jason, Chucky, The Ring, The Grudge, all the Aliens, Predator, Poltergeist; I devoured everything that involved some kind of creature tearing people apart or freaking them out. I drove Dante crazy with the times I would sneak into his room late at night because I was convinced some pale little girl would crawl through the television and flicker her way to my bed. Paranormal movies always got to me, because while I was fairly certain the Alien or Predator would die from a fireball between the eyes, and even Jason would be no match for a dragon, what could you do to a ghost?
True, this was not your typical poltergeist set, but that didn’t mean anything. I’d seen plenty of sci-fi movies where the heroes were sent to investigate a laboratory or compound or spaceship that had abruptly gone dark, and everything was quiet and abandoned when they arrived, but you just knew something was still out there, stalking them.
In fact, I think I’d seen this exact setup before: the creepy underground lab, the rows of strange machines, the large glass cylinders stretched to the ceiling. I could feel a shiver run up my spine as Riley’s flashlight beam skittered over the tubes, all thankfully empty but no less disturbing. I knew what those tubes were for: growing things. Living things. Either trying to improve upon nature, or to create something new. And it was always, as every movie, book and story had shown, a very, very bad idea.