Disciple: DreamWalkers, Book 2 (33 page)

“There’s always time to pay our respects, son,” the curator admonished. “Otherwise, we’re no better than the wraiths themselves, vicious and animalistic.”

If the old guy wanted to preach, why was the doctor getting special treatment and not the soldiers who’d guarded him? Zeke stifled a growl of frustration. Poorly.

The curator raised his eyebrows at Zeke and cleared his throat. “Dear Doctor Weir, you faithfully executed your duties during your employment with our fine organization. It’s possible you saved me from an uncomfortable incident. When ordered into the fray to give solace and healing to the soldiers who needed you, you didn’t hesitate. And now that you have given your life for our cause, you will not be forgotten.”

“Amen.” Maggie nudged the curator into motion, apparently as impatient as Zeke was. “Did anybody answer you on the walkie?”

Zeke grimaced. His boots ground in wraith dust on the floor. “I can’t get a response.”

Maggie tried hers too—nothing but static. She replaced it on her belt.

“It seems we’re alone,” the curator remarked. “Isn’t this a pretty pickle? Thank goodness I have two L5s to protect me. I hope the reinforcements arrive soon.”

Zeke refused to accept what he knew could be true. “We don’t know that we’re alone.”

The curator nodded kindly. “I’m sure our compatriots have a good reason to ignore repeated hails on their walkie talkies. Until they do, we should proceed as if we are all who remain.”

Zeke grunted. They approached the long stairwell to the surface and the guard post there. The facility possessed blast doors at ground level. Zeke eyed the staircase and wondered how long it was going to take the curator to climb it and whether the exertion would give the guy another heart attack.

He could stash Maggie and the curator in a room and check the surface himself. There and back in a couple minutes. The odds that the vigil-block would wear off and Karen could manifest wraiths into Maggie’s exact hiding place were much slimmer than the odds of Zeke running into a horde of wraiths on the other side of the blast doors.

“I’m going to check the top.” He assumed the blast doors were sealed. If they’d been breached, the whole place would be swarming with Karen’s minions out for Maggie’s blood. “You two hide in the kitchen.”

“Your young man doesn’t think I can handle the stairs,” the curator whispered to Maggie, loudly. He patted his knobbly hands on his walker.

“I don’t either.” Maggie stuck her hands on her hips. “Do you?”

The curator appeared to be taken aback by Maggie’s frankness. “I can’t say I’m going to enjoy it, but I’m not as decrepit as I look.”

“You’re still going to stay here,” Zeke said. “In the kitchen.”

The curator eyed him sharply. “You do realize you aren’t in charge, don’t you, Ezekiel?”

Zeke shrugged. He didn’t give a rat’s ass if he got demoted after this. Considering the danger they were in, they’d be lucky to survive. No matter how it heartened him that Maggie had such faith in him, the situation wouldn’t have escalated to this point if he hadn’t screwed up with Karen a year ago. He owed it to Maggie to do everything he could to make sure she didn’t die because of his poor decisions.

If the curator got them all eaten because he was being a stubborn cuss, that sure as hell wasn’t fair to Maggie.

“Do you want to survive this, sir, or do you want to be in charge?” Zeke asked. “If you feel it’s that important, I can’t stop you. Well, I can, but I won’t.”

The curator stiffened at Zeke’s matter-of-fact vehemence, and the wrinkled skin around his eyes creased deeply. Something hard and angry glinted behind the man’s outward sunniness.

“I could order you to comply,” he said calmly. “I believe you young people call it pulling rank.”

“Go ahead. How do plan to enforce it? Mean words?” He risked a glance at Maggie. Her expression was blank, but he fancied he saw an inkling of support there, in the tiniest quirk of her lips. And in her silence. Maggie never held her tongue if she had something to say. “Are you going to shoot me when you can’t be bothered to wear the guns we offered you in a crisis situation?”

“You don’t know what I can do.” The curator’s glacial composure spooked Zeke a little. People who couldn’t back up their threats didn’t tend to remain calm while uttering them. “And you don’t want to know what I can do. But if you continue in this vein, you may find out.”

“Because I deserve to be punished for doing everything in my power to protect one of our curators? Because I won’t drag his fragile old ass into an active warzone?” This guy, this calm-in-the-face-of-imminent-death-and-dismemberment old coot, was one of the seven most essential people in the Somnium—and in the world, since the Somnium stood between the wraiths and the civilian populace.

Perhaps, as eldest, he was the most important. The most important person in the world.

Did he want to be the most dead? No matter what the curator thought he could do—secret healing abilities, perhaps—alucinators were merely human. Humans had limits. The one-two punch of reality from Maggie and Zeke was more probably more honesty than the guy had dealt in his whole year.

Some of the iciness leached out of the curator’s posture when Zeke refused to back down. “You sound like the others. I can take care of myself, son.”

Zeke acknowledged him with a nod. “That’s exactly why I won’t stop you. You’re free to climb the stairs. Have another heart attack. Get attacked by the wraith horde when I open the blast doors. Maggie will remain in the kitchen, where it’s safe. Safer.”

“I’m definitely staying downstairs for now,” Maggie told the curator, less aggressively than Zeke. “I’m not that fantastic in combat, and Zeke will be back after he touches base with the others. Won’t you, Zeke?”

“Yes,” Zeke promised, hoping it was true. “This is a recon mission. I can move faster alone.”

“Then I believe I’ll remain downstairs with Margaret,” the curator conceded. “But we’ll be discussing your insubordination after you deal with the wraiths.”

“I look forward to it,” Zeke said. Not caring what the old bastard thought, he kissed Maggie swiftly, locked her and the curator in the kitchen, and began the climb to the surface.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Zeke had been gone five minutes and hadn’t checked in on the walkie. Maggie fingered the transmit button as she stared at the kitchen door. While it was the same reinforced metal as the other doors in the outbunker, it seemed like a flimsy barrier between her terrible swordsmanship and the wraiths that might be on the other side of it.

“Could you sense when Adi placed the vigil-block?” she asked the curator, who had fixed himself—of all things—a cheese sandwich.

He hobbled to a table and eased himself into a chair. “I respected the wishes of the doctor and didn’t access the dreamsphere. I would guesstimate, based on the last live manifestation I witnessed, that the vigil-block was placed twenty minutes ago. Miss Kingsbury developed some eerily precise aim with her manifestations, I have to say. It’s a shame she’s completely psychotic. I suspect there’s much we could learn from her.”

“I don’t know about that. She spent most of her time ranting about the Master.” Adi hadn’t told the curator about Karen’s possible healing ability, so Maggie didn’t mention it. If the curators could heal themselves, this one wouldn’t have heart trouble. “When Zeke and I were in the sphere, she was definitely controlling the wraiths.”

“Fascinating. Do you believe she chooses what manifests as well?”

“Is that something you’ve heard of before?” she asked.

“Yes and no. At our research facility, which you may have heard of, the L4s and L5s in charge of experimental manifestations can influence wraith type if they concentrate hard enough. Or if they watch the right movie several times before trancing out, you know. However, there has never been any behavioral control during or after the manifestation process.”

Maggie wondered how he could eat at a time like this. Her stomach would reject anything she put into it. “You mentioned you’d had trouble with assassins before. Did they use wraiths as weapons?”

“We have dealt with rogues before, though I recall no accounts of one that could control his manifestations.” He tsked, more like a professor annoyed by a disappointing student than an elderly, defenseless man in a life or death situation. “Though curators can hide ourselves, actual manifestations cannot be concealed from other alucinators who might be scanning. Speaking of which, this is as good a time as any to confound the knowledge of the camouflage piercing tactic from you. Why don’t you have a seat beside me?”

“Actually, sir,” Maggie said, rather amazed, “it’s not a good time. We could be attacked at any minute, and you’re not supposed to access the sphere.”

“Confounding doesn’t require complete sphere access.” He nibbled his way around the crust of the sandwich like a child.

“I might need to locate Karen again before this is over,” she insisted, reluctant to have the old man tinkering in her memories. She hadn’t studied confounding yet and didn’t know much about it, but what if he inadvertently erased knowledge she needed? Like the fact Zeke had been gone seven whole minutes without reporting in. “The vigil-block isn’t going to last forever.”

“Are you going to be this argumentative when you’re my student?” he asked.

“Probably.”

“And your young man?”

Zeke was a decent teacher, better than he realized, but she couldn’t imagine what type of student he’d be. “Worse.”

“I see I’ll have my work cut out for me.” The curator didn’t seem perturbed by the relationship he’d detected between Maggie and Zeke. Did he realize Zeke was bellatorix or was he assuming Zeke would transfer to the Orbis where Maggie would be training?

Then again, the curator didn’t seem perturbed by this entire situation.

She decided not to tell him about Zeke. It would give rise to too many questions, and she couldn’t concentrate on a tricky conversation right now. She had to remain alert. Guarded. Single-minded.

Adi’s warnings against trusting the curators hadn’t made complete sense at the time, but the curator was unlike any Somnium employees she’d met. He had lofty goals and a unique perspective. She supposed he had to be different, though why he showed so little fear in the face of almost certain disaster was a mystery.

She peered nervously through the glass window in the door. Nothing. The reddish emergency lighting provided better visibility than the purple flashers at the coma station.

“I wonder what’s keeping Zeke?” At a normal pace, she could ascend the stairs to the surface in four minutes. Zeke had left had a dead run. “He should have notified us by now.”

Though he’d probably prefer not to be hailed when there was no emergency, Maggie flicked on the walkie. “Maggie speaking. What’s happening upstairs?”

Static. Had Zeke run into problems before he’d reached the surface? Palms sweaty, Maggie eased open the kitchen door so she could stare up the corridor toward the main entrance.

Still nothing, except her own fingers tapping nervously on the door, her own breathing, and the curator crunching a pickle. Leaving the kitchen door open, she eased into the depths of the outbunker. She heard no cave-ins, moans or monsters. She returned, passing the kitchen, and headed for the main stairwell. She could pause at the first landing without leaving the curator too vulnerable.

As she walked, she listened closely to the sounds in the building. Again, all she could detect were her own footsteps and breathing.

Until she realized she seemed to have twice as many footsteps as she should.

Maggie halted. Still heard noise.

The hasty thumps of running feet echoed faintly through the corridor. Some wraiths could travel that fast. The damn T-Rex certainly had, but a dino would make a lot more racket.

In moments, Zeke bolted through the stairwell entrance. He waved his arms. “Get the curator, we gotta go!”

Behind him, Maggie heard more footsteps. Bigger footsteps. Lots of footsteps.

And howls. Growls. Slavering.

Above it all, a female voice, screaming commands at the top of her lungs.

“Are you okay?” she asked Zeke. “Where’s everyone else?”

He grabbed her arm, whirled her into the kitchen. “Karen’s behind me. And she’s really fucking pissed.”

Without ceremony, Zeke yanked the curator out of the chair, where the old man sat with half a pickle poised at his mouth.

“Sorry about this, sir.” He tossed the curator over his shoulder and scrammed out of the room.

Maggie didn’t ask for details, she just followed. Though Zeke was lugging the curator, he nearly outpaced her as he raced deeper into the outbunker.

“Put me down, young man,” the curator wheezed. “I’m too old for this sort of thing.”

“Be quiet,” Zeke said, not even winded. “Maggie, open and slam the next door.”

Maggie nearly skidded past, grabbing the handle to stop herself. The door flung itself open, catching her sprained wrist between handle and wall. She let out a cry, stifled it, and kicked the door closed.

The boom of metal reverberated through the dusty corridor. The howls and moans of the horde seemed closer. What was Zeke’s plan? She had a sword, he had his weapons, and the curator…

Had an attitude.

“You little piss-ant, put me down,” the curator complained. As Zeke sprinted, the words were jounced out of the older man. “That’s…an…order.”

“Emergency exit,” Zeke growled. “Now shut up.”

So there was a secret exit. Maggie hoped it wasn’t in the section of the outbunker that had collapsed, though surely Zeke had considered that.

They ran as silently as they could down the next flight of stairs. Many footsteps marred the dust in the floor. Karen and her mob wouldn’t be able to track them that way, but there were only a few places in the outbunker anyone could hide. The trick with the door wouldn’t confuse them long.

An eerie, ululating cry Maggie had never heard before crept up her spine, giving her a horrible case of the shivers.

“That’s a banshee,” the curator observed. “I haven’t heard of one of…those manifesting in… How unusual.” The fringe of white on his head bounced up and down as Zeke ran. “Ach, my ribs are never…going to be the same…after this.”

“But you might be alive,” Maggie panted. What had happened to the other soldiers? To Adi and Lill? Did Zeke’s solo flight mean everyone was dead? “If the monsters after us scare Zeke, sir, our best bet is to outrun them.”

They flew past the common room and entered the portion of the outbunker where cracks marred the walls, pipes whistled, and masonry cluttered the floor. Dust gathered in the air like a sandstorm, and the emergency lighting flickered. Maggie nearly tripped over a wire strewn across the floor.

The hallway became difficult to navigate. Parts of the ceiling had chunked to the ground, and the corridor ahead appeared to be blocked.

“Shit, shit, shit.” Zeke dumped the curator off his back and started shoveling into the barrier with his hands. “We cannot be trapped. I won’t allow it. Maggie, check the other side.”

Stomach clenched, she smiled tightly at the exasperated curator and inspected the mound of dirt, rebar, pipe, ceiling tiles and block that filled the hallway. In the bottom corner, a large beam of metal buttressed the unbroken wall, creating a crawl space.

She’d rather die crushed by tons of rock than at the hands of Karen, a T-Rex and a banshee. “Found a hole. Going in.”

She dropped to her knees and crawled. After a few feet, the space opened up. She fumbled around with her hands, praying she wouldn’t wind up electrocuted. An area almost high enough to stand and about three feet wide existed between the wall and the rubble.

Even better, it continued in the direction they needed to go, but it was too dark for her to see how far.

“It’s stable,” she called. “Hurry.”

Zeke and the curator followed. They slid along the wall. Maggie tried to make as little noise as possible while listening for the sounds of pursuit. Zeke half-dragged the curator, and the old man’s protests condensed to pained mutters.

“The rubble should slow them,” Maggie whispered to her companions. “Where’s the emergency exit?” The only thing Maggie remembered at this end of the outbunker were bunk rooms and the armory.

They escaped the rubble into a larger area. Fresh scrapes zinged Maggie’s skin from the wriggle through the wreckage. Frayed wiring and broken pipes hissed in the darkness, and the building moaned an audible protest at the damage done to it by the dinosaur and the grenade. When Maggie’s eyes adjusted to the meager light from the crack they’d traversed, she realized they were near the junction.

“I can’t fucking see,” Zeke cursed.

“Hold on, son. I may be old, but I know how to prepare.” Soft, patting sounds issued from the curator. “Ah, here it is.”

A penlight flickered in Maggie’s direction. “Margaret, my dear, you’re holding up very well. I’ll be proud to call you my student when this is over.”

Maggie opened her mouth to answer, but muffled detonations rocked behind them. She ducked instinctively, holding her arms above her head. Zeke protected the curator.

Unfortunately, the uproar wasn’t their crawly hole caving in and separating them from Karen. After the third shuddery boom, a familiar bellow flooded Maggie with terror.

Another T-Rex. Any intact room she, Zeke and the curator barricaded themselves in, the dinosaur could bash open. The dinosaur could gouge through the buckled walls and ceiling too.

This secret exit had better be functional. And well-hidden. And unknown to Karen. Though when they reached the surface, would the rest of the horde be waiting to receive them?

Zeke led the way in the opposite direction of the armory, toward the sleeping quarters. The curator’s penlight glinted on cracks and bent pipes instead of cascades of concrete. Maggie helped the curator hobble along, probably faster than he ought to be going. She could swear she heard his bones creaking—over the roars and howls behind them.

From the sound of it, the horde had reached the rubble. Bashing, crashing and rumbling drowned out the more animalistic noises. They didn’t have much time—unless the horde brought down the ceiling and they all died.

After entering the next to last bunkroom, which was missing its door, Zeke released a small lever and shoved the top bunk toward the wall. On hidden hinges, it folded at an angle, creating a ramp that led toward the ceiling. He flung the thin mattress out of the way.

“Watch out—the lower edge is sharp,” he cautioned. He hopped onto it, popped out a standard white ceiling tile, and revealed the bottom rung of a ladder ascending into a narrow tube.

He gestured for Maggie. “You’re gonna move slow with a sprained wrist, so you go first. When you reach the top, the code to open the manhole cover is 1981.” He grimaced. “Some of the wraiths with Karen can climb. Don’t dally.”

She recognized at once that the curator wasn’t going to be able to scale the ladder faster than the wraiths—if he could scale it at all. They’d run out of time for miracles. Zeke had led them to the only possible exit, the only possible solution, but it might not be possible after all.

Could Zeke tote the old man up the tube or was he going to sacrifice the curator in order to save her? Would he bother to save himself?

It should be the other way around. She might be a bellatorix, might be an L5, but she wasn’t a curator. The old man had priority.

“He should go first,” she said gently. “With your help. Or none of us should go.”

“I’d be a lot better off with a rope and a pulley system,” the curator observed. “I don’t think my knees can handle a ladder.” He seemed to be trying to make them feel better about the decision they had to make—a decision that would result in somebody’s death.

The curator had all the reasons in the world to be furious, fearful and raging, but instead the old man remained calm. His bravery stabbed Maggie in the heart like a stake.

“No rope. Sorry.” Zeke caught her arm. The curator’s kind words hadn’t softened Zeke’s grim expression. He glared at her, but the twist of his lips told a different story. “Maggie, you’re wasting time. Go up the fucking ladder.”

She stared back at him. A hot ball of misery constricted her throat. They’d tried to survive. Tried to protect each other and the curator, who hadn’t had any idea what he was getting into when he’d flown to the US to adopt a new student. He’d been so pleased by his real-world adventure, so determined to enjoy himself.