Hunted (Dark Secrets Book 1) (29 page)

"There's only one path, and when Morag separated us he forced us into opposite directions. Since he wants you I'm sure you're headed to the middle where your mother is and I was headed to the opening," Theron explained.

"
Was?
" What did he mean by
was
? "How are we going to get out of this? Morag will never let us escape."

"I'm working on that too," he quipped.

"Work faster!" I came around another bend and a Sicarius crossed my path, running from the left wall into the right wall without attacking. "One just crossed in front of me into the wall!"

"Good!" he said.

"Oh, yeah! Great," I retorted sarcastically.

Just then the Sicarius flailed out from the right wall. Theron was locked onto the creature's back, discharging taser slugs into his heart through the back of his ribcage! I stopped short. My mouth dropped open. The thing lay limp. Theron vaulted to his feet.

"Hey, beautiful!" His face was lit with a cocky smile.

"How did you do that?" I beamed with excitement.

"Quantum split left by the Sicarius," he said. But his face fell and so did his jaw when he got a better look at me. "Is this your blood?"

"Some of it." Truth was, most of it was mine.

"You're sliced up! We have to get you bandaged, now!"

"No! There's no time! It'll have to wait." Before he could protest, I bolted in the direction I had been running before.

He ran up beside me. Besides being really sweaty, he looked fine. "Are you injured?" I asked.

"Naw." He shook his head.

We suddenly heard my mother's desperate voice from up ahead. "Please, Morag stop it!" We put on a burst of speed. "They're only children!"

Brilliant light radiated across my sight. A wall of three Sicarius blocked the passage to the center room where my mother was trapped. The monstrous fencing was there to strike us down.

I grabbed ahold of Theron's arm, but my hands slipped to his wrist, and I threw all of my weight back to stop him. He spun around and opened his mouth to say something, but I covered his lips with my hand and shook my head. I had no idea how good the Sicarius' hearing was or if they even had any. But I knew we had the advantage of surprise. I mouthed, "THREE," and held up three fingers.

Theron furrowed his brow, probably wondering how I had acquired that intel. Then he gripped my blood-soaked shoulders, and a pitying look crossed his face. Doctor Hawk was afraid I was losing too much blood. He put the Chinook in my hand. He made a stop signal with his hand in front of me
… "Wait here," he mouthed.

I frowned but did what he said anyway. Theron turned the curve and I heard his sword open. After several grunts, a few curse words and some slamming, Theron hollered out, "Freya, come on!"

I rounded the corner to find three downed Sicarius at the center of the maze with Theron standing in the middle of them. And there was my mother. The razored teeth were only scant inches from her cheeks.

"MOM!" I ran over and tentatively touched the violent arms to try to pull them back and away from her, but they were razor sharp.

Theron hacked methodically at the restraints behind the torture device my mother was bound to. "Quick, Freya, give me a knife."

I handed it to him fast.

"How did you get here?" My mother said, crying.

"Long story," I said as I searched behind her body with my fingers for some kind of release mechanism.

"I'm so sorry, Freya." Her crying came in bursts of sobs.

"Stay strong, Mama. We're going to get you out of here!"

"That's not why I'm crying."

"Got it!" Theron said.

"I never meant to leave you for so long! I'm so, so sorry! I missed you so much!" Sobs racked her frame.

I knelt down in front of her. "I know, Mom. I know."

"We have to go now!" Theron interrupted.

"I can't move my legs," my mom breathed. "I've been strapped here for hours."

"Plan B," Theron said and dug through his ammunitions pouch. "C4—Stay right here."

He jogged out of the room and, almost as quickly, pounced back into it. An explosion made the floor and walls around us quake. He hoisted my mother up over his shoulder and said, "This way."

Back at the room entrance he had blown a huge hole into the flooring, revealing a tunnel underneath.

"How did you know?" I asked.

"I've lived and trained here my whole life."

We descended the ladder and started to run the best we could down the tunnel.

"Thank you both," my mother said in a more normal tone. The sobbing had abated.

"I know your voice well, ma'am," Theron said with respect. "The goddess Freya is indeed in danger."

"
You?
You are the one?!" my mother marveled.

"Yes, ma'am. And I've been trying to keep her safe ever since I met her, but she is a difficult one to pin down," he laughed.

And so did she. To me, it sounded like the ringing of chimes.

"If I get you to the main floor, Mrs. Catten, could you direct us to the physics lab and to the Bifrost?"

"Yes, I can. And call me Anna," she said.

Theron took some sort of direction finder out of his pocket and examined it. "How are you holding up, Freya?" He was worried.

"Holding my own." I tried to throw some extra confidence into my tone for good measure, but to myself I thought—
Just barely.

We traveled about a quarter mile before Theron stopped underneath another metal ladder.

"Time to go up. Let's try and get your legs working first," he said and set my mom down gently while still supporting her weight.

She wobbled at first. I couldn't help but take her in. We did look even more similar now that I was older, even though her hair was long and blond and mine was brown. She wore a soft pink button-up blouse. Her blue eyes looked tired and lacked the luster they had once shined with. She stepped back and forth, shifting her weight from leg to leg, sort of like marching in place, until the blood flow returned. She straightened her light gray pleated pants. She still looked athletic
—she was the one who had gotten me into running.

"I can do this," she said. "But first
—" she threw her arms around me. We embraced for a moment then she pulled Theron in. She pulled back too soon. "She's losing color and temperature," she said to Theron as if I wasn't even there.

A look of fierce determination spread over his face. He scaled the ladder and lifted a square in the ceiling that led up into the floor above us. He peered around then climbed out. "It's clear."

We all climbed up and out and closed the hole.

"This way," my mom said once she got her bearings.

We started down another white-washed hallway to the right, but didn't get far before she said, "It's there. Just up ahead."

"I'll scout it out," Theron said, stopping us. "No way it's unguarded."

He surged up ahead, came back and corralled us up against the wall. "Close your eyes," he instructed.

Flash grenade,
I thought. Theron let two go. Screams were cut short. We ran over. Two soldiers were prostrate on the hard flooring.

My mother pressed a code into a computer in the wall at the side of the door. Theron went in first with his taser pistol aimed.

"Do you have the necklace?" My mother asked, rummaging through a drawer once we were inside.

"No. I've hidden it," I whispered.

"That was good thinking," she said and swiped a bit of my blood off from my shirt and onto a glass slide. She pressed the slide into a small divot on a four foot metal cylinder that stood on a table with a bunch of other equipment set up around it. A short, green laser light scanned the bloody plate, and a panel opened to reveal a chamber just wide enough for the slide. A mechanism sounded and the slide was automatically pulled through and closed in. A large blue circle on the floor on the other side of the room lit up with white light.

Theron was beside the door trying to find a way to jam it closed, but there wasn't much in the way of furniture in the lab and certainly nothing movable to stack against it.

Morag's voice thundered down the hall, "STOP THEM! THEY ARE OPENING THE BIFROST!"

"Hurry, Freya," my mother instructed. "Swallow this"
—she put a little tablet into my hand—"and get in the center of the circle so I can calibrate it."

I quickly positioned myself in the center of the circle and, immediately, long glowing straight lines of light began to materialize. The pure white light was brilliant and dazzling. The beams moved and shifted all around me
—above my head and below my feet—then they began connecting, line by line. They created twelve large pentagons, dancing about my body like my own private laser show. One by one, each pentagon maneuvered to link with the pentagon next to it until they were all linked to form a slowly rotating dodecahedron. A wild wind started to rise up within the light.

Theron was struggling against the door. Soldiers on the other side were shouting and smashing up against it. He had managed to wedge something under the door, but I couldn't tell what it was, and it obviously wasn't going to hold them for long. It looked like the only thing really standing in their way was Theron.

"The Bifrost will stay activated for three minutes before it shuts down again," my mother explained as she grabbed a brown leather satchel and stepped into the spinning light next to me.

"Theron, it's time!" I shouted over the increasing wind.

"I told you, Freya—I love you more than my life," he answered.

"What are you
saying
?!" I demanded.

"If I let go, they'll get through this door, leap through the portal and kill you. I can't let that happen." Theron's voice was resolved and I could see Morag's soldiers gaining leeway against the door.

"GET. IN. HERE. NOW!" I screamed at him in desperation.

But even as the words exited my mouth, I could feel every cell and molecule of my body impossibly shifting. All at once the temperate wind gathered in one purposeful direction, funneling my mom and me through it. The lab receded into the distance, giving the impression that we were falling, but I didn't
feel
like I was falling. The soles of my feet felt firmly stable on solid ground.

I pushed forward to break through the lights and reach Theron
—to pull him in with us. But I couldn't even touch the lights. There was some sort of invisible shield.

"Once you're in, you can't get out," my mom said grimly.

Two soldiers burst through the door. Theron kicked the first one to the side and slammed the second soldier's head with the heavy door itself.

"THERON!" I shouted, but the sound was lost in the wind.

As the two soldiers crumpled to the floor, three more rushed in. Theron's sword gleamed in the fading scene. I watched him pivot and swing the weapon in a smooth arch. Then, like the sun setting over the horizon, the void closed and the scene was gone.

My Theron was gone.

My mother's hand clasped mine. A kaleidoscope of colors flickered randomly and enveloped us. We rushed through a tube—a surrounding curtain of white lights rushed past us.

For a moment, I was the light as it radiated throughout my circulating atoms. I was a powerful star, as brilliant as any that shone in the heavens. I was invincible, indestructible
—eternal.

The world became more concrete around us. A gray sky poured rain, green trees were touched with the hints of autumn and a familiar white building was set to our right. The Jefferson Monument. Grass formed under my boots. The wind was wild again. The dodecahedron continued its rotation for another moment then slowly dismantled just as it had formed
—disconnecting line by line, each vaporizing into the air. My mother and I were left standing in Washington, D.C., on the lawn in front of the Jefferson Memorial.

"Send me back!" I yelled, panicking.

"I can't."

"Send me back, now!" I pleaded.

"I can't Freya! I have no reactor and no
Brísingamen
!"

"Please! I have to help him!" I cried.

"Where is the necklace?"

"Back on Cathal
—hidden in the Tomb of Remorse."

"It was the right thing to do considering the circumstances," my mother responded.

"What does it do?"

"It holds power beyond imagination and requires your fingertips to function."

"How do we get a reactor?" My mind raced for an immediate solution.

"We don't," she said painfully. "I have to build one."

"How long, Mom?" I couldn't conceal the panic in my voice.

"Three months, maybe six." She paused. "It depends on how quickly I can obtain the materials."

Three to six months!
I sank to my knees in the wet grass.

I peered up into the gray Earth sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of where I had been
—of Theron. The blinding rain pelted against my exposed face. Dark, swollen clouds gathered ominously above me. It was the perfect metaphor for my life. I buried my face in my bloodstained hands.

My mother came down and wrapped her arms around me. I looked into her beautiful face. Here she was
… my mother… safe beside me. Theron had given me the most precious gift—he had given me back my mother—and selflessly sacrificed himself to do it.

It was too bittersweet, the exchange of one love one for another. The relief and joy I was prepared to feel was twisted and distorted into a devastating pain by Theron's loss.

"Freya, he's a brilliant fighter. I don't doubt his ability to escape," my mother said, trying to comfort me.

I could not be comforted. "His zoesphere!" I said looking at her with my last flicker of hope. I gazed onto the glass orb. "It's black
—it was garnet, now it's black. What does that mean?"

She shook her head. "I'm
… not… sure. It might not even work in our atmosphere. It may be too far, too remote, to transmit. I really don't know, Freya."

I stared into the blackened zoesphere and recalled Theron's last words to me, '
I
told you, Freya
—
I love you more than my life.'

I decided on my next mission resolutely. No matter how long it took
—I would go back to Novia, find Theron and bring him back. And if Theron was dead… I took a deep steadying breath through my nose. My mission would be simple—
to destroy Morag.

"Why are we in D.C.?" I rose to my feet.

My mother regarded me carefully. "To meet with the Secretary of Defense—and Homeland Security. They have to know the threat. I still have connections in high places."

"What if they try to lock you up?" I asked
.

"With the disappearance of so many
—no. They'll have too many questions that I have the answers to." She shrugged. "I don't have a choice and there are a few prominent people who I believe will shelter me."

"Mikkelsson is the one who turned our location in to Morag and the Takers. He lied to us too
—said he never saw you after you first disappeared from your lab."

"Mikkelsson is a liar," she said plaintively. "His involvement has to be made known. That's how I was captured. I went back to Mikkelsson to talk about how we could close the Bifrost. I was working in my old lab when Morag and his men showed up."

"Scarlett has to be warned too. She still thinks he's an ally."

"Let's get under the shelter of the gazebo" she said, motioning across the lawn.

I nodded and we walked through the rain to the covering and sat on the dry bench. The crisp air raised goose bumps on my flesh.