Prometheus Road (27 page)

Tom reached out to touch the oval lens, and it pinged as if he’d tapped a crystal water glass. When he looked around the ruby columns, he saw only an empty white desert, devoid of vegetation. Was the house simply an image trapped in the glass lens?

He knew, somehow, that this was the Stronghold gate. From here, he could leave the Road and enter the virtual world of the Dominion without all the hardware he’d used in Sandoval’s missile silo. Essentially, this was the back door, and Tom was the special key that could unlock it. But how? And why did it look like a house?

He placed his palm flat against the lens. It felt cool and resonated with a subtle vibration when his skin touched its surface. When he rubbed his hand across the glass, the vibration caused a ringing tone, but nothing else happened. The house—and the gravel path that led up to its front porch—did not move, change color, or disappear.

Tom felt anxious as he remembered that his body was trapped in a foam cage deep beneath the earth, slowly suffocating along with Helix and his friends. Although he didn’t know how much time he had, he knew he had a deadline. Time moved more slowly on the Prometheus Road, but he didn’t know what the time difference was like in the Stronghold environment, if he could even get that far.

He slapped his palm against the glass, and it rang like a bell, but no one answered the door. He tried to remember anything Magnus or Dead Man might have said that could help him now, but nothing seemed relevant.

He had to create his path. He focused his attention on the lens, and on the house beyond it.

His feet crunched on gravel.

He blinked, adjusting his gaze to the massive scale of the house in front of him. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw the rose lens and the Road beyond it. Beyond the edges of the gravel path, and the outline of the enormous white house, there lay only blackness. His vertigo returned, and he quickly scurried up the gravel path to the front porch, feeling more secure once he’d reached the front door of the house. He had the sense that the house was another kind of bridge, creating a connection between the Stronghold world and the Road.

The porch ended at the sides of the house. Anxious about his friends, his urgency propelled him forward. He opened the front door and entered.

The smell of sulfur, or something like it, assailed his nose. The wide entry led to a dim hallway straight ahead, a broad staircase that swept up to the second floor beneath a crystal chandelier, and three doors to other rooms. He saw no furniture or other signs of occupancy.

He heard a scuttling movement in the dimly lighted hallway, like the noise a giant crab might make while running and clacking its claws together. He sensed that something evil was moving toward him in the shadows, something with dead eyes and a desire to kill him.

Tom tried the first doorknob. It was locked.

The scuttling sound came closer, sliding across the hardwood floor with a heavy tread.

The other doors seemed to be on the far side of the thing in the shadows, so he darted up the staircase, hoping it couldn’t climb after him. But the pounding on the steps told him he was wrong, and it seemed even more anxious to get him.

Passing under another chandelier, Tom entered a long, carpeted hallway that ran the length of the house. Mirrors and faded old paintings dotted the walls between closed doors made of polished mahogany. The ceiling seemed unusually high, admitting a weak illumination through skylights that looked out on a pitch-black sky. The brass doorknobs had an odd glow about them, as if they functioned as night-lights in the dark hallway.

Tom ran straight ahead, his feet thumping against the carpet, not wanting to look back to see even the silhouette of the shadowy thing that was chasing him. He didn’t bother with the doors nearby, afraid that the thing would get him before he could open them—he ran straight to the door at the end of the hallway, which was larger than all the rest. Ornately carved images of monstrous figures swirled and danced across the surface of the mahogany door, scribed into the wood by the hands of a master carpenter possessed by demons. The brass doorknob looked like the head of a rattlesnake, and Tom doubted that any of this was standard décor for a Victorian home, unless it had been owned by Jack the Ripper or some equally famous murderer of legend.

He turned the rattlesnake knob, and the door creaked as he flung it open. The scuttling noise was rapidly bearing down on him. Without any further thought, he lunged through the doorway and slammed the door, holding the inner knob in his hand so that it wouldn’t turn while he tried to figure out how to lock it in the darkness. A reddish light glowed through the gap beneath the door as a heavy weight slammed into the other side. Pressing his shoulder into the carved wood and bracing his feet, he fumbled for a latch or some other kind of lock, but he couldn’t find one. The doorknob twisted in his hand, and he gripped it harder to keep it from turning farther. Then he found a small bolt lock and slid it home into the doorframe. He knew it wouldn’t last long under the punishing weight that slammed repeatedly against the door, but at least it was the concept of a lock, and the idea gave him some comfort.

He wished his eyes would hurry up and adjust to the darkness. The room didn’t appear to have any windows, and he didn’t know if there were any lights. He felt around for a switch beside the door, but there was nothing except a smooth wall. Was there any furniture he could move in front of the door to brace it? The door rattled again under a heavy impact. He suspected that his weight pushing against the door was doing more than the lock was to hold back the angry creature on the other side, so he hesitated to move farther into the room.

He blinked into the featureless blackness, listening to the sound of his pounding heart and the grunting noise on the other side of the door. Then he heard something slide across the floor.

A chill raced up his spine as he realized that something was in the room with him.

He heard a snort.

Tom looked higher, aware now that the sound came from a point across the room above the level of his head.

Two fiery eyes, about eight inches apart, studied him as if he were an annoying bug. Flaming with pure hatred, the demonic eyes slowly began to move toward him through the inky blackness.

The door thumped again, and the hinges creaked under the strain, weakening under the impacts. Tom tried to think of anything else that he might mistake for a pair of fiery eyes, but these were definitely eyes, and they were definitely moving toward him in a pitch-black room where he had no place to run.

With a hiss, the eyes suddenly lunged toward his face.

Tom threw himself to one side, hoping he wouldn’t knock himself unconscious on some unseen piece of furniture. But he didn’t land on anything that could be called furniture; he landed on something with a foul odor that squished when he hit it. He tasted the coppery flavor of blood in his mouth, then realized that he wasn’t bleeding—it was blood that had shot into his mouth when he landed on the squishy thing.

Tom rolled away in horror, spitting out used blood, when he saw the fiery eyes about three feet away from his face. The thing’s hot breath smelled like burnt meat. He screamed and scrabbled backward, hitting his head against a wall as his hands slipped on the oozing lump on the floor.

A knife, or something else that was long and pointed, slammed into the side of his face, piercing one cheek and exiting through the other. A burning sensation erupted in his mouth, and now he tasted his own blood. He twisted his head away, yanking his face free of the blade, or claw, or tusk, or whatever it was, and ducked sideways, desperate to get away, clambering over the stinking carcass on the floor.

Something thumped into his back, then he hit his head again on a shelf protruding from the wall. He heard two heavy footsteps behind him and hurled himself sideways again as a heavy object smashed into the floor where he’d stopped. The thing with the eyes let out an angry hiss. Tom tried to ignore the pain in his face and the blood running down his neck to soak his shirt, knowing that if he made another wrong move, it would be his last.

His eyes still hadn’t adjusted to the darkness. He wanted to see the thing and get some sense of what it was, but he also knew that it might tip him over into madness to see the nightmare that was trying to kill him. He couldn’t think with all the adrenaline racing through his system telling him to run, even when there wasn’t anyplace that he could go. And he couldn’t fight what he couldn’t see.

The door splintered and exploded open, bathing the room in the light from the hallway and the red glow of a crablike creature with heavy claws and multiple legs. Four eyes on stalks rotated toward him. Before Tom could turn his attention to his closest opponent, he heard a whistling above his head and rolled. One heartbeat later, a heavy, clawed foot smashed into the wood floor beside him.

His foot dragged against cloth, and a gray light flashed above his head. A window. He had kicked the thick drapes that covered a broad window on the back wall of the room. The creature with the fiery eyes, an entity of the darkness, bellowed with anger and pain.

The crab launched itself into the room.

Without any further thought, Tom threw himself at the window.

The glass exploded under the weight of his body, ripping into his skin, tearing his clothes, and he briefly wondered if he was going to fall to his death or plunge into a bottomless dark pit.

He grunted as his shoulders struck a steeply angled roof. He splayed his arms and legs in an attempt to stop his momentum, but the wood shingles cracked and splintered under his hands, shredding the skin of his fingers as he continued to slide toward the edge.

He heard an angry roar above him as the roof fell away, and he hurtled through the air.

By chance, he hit with his feet first, showering gravel off the path as he landed, absorbing the impact in his legs as he rolled to a bloody stop. He rolled over on his back, gasping for air, happy not to be dead, thrilled to see that his pursuers had not followed him through the window.

Tom was at the back of the Victorian house. A directionless gray light filled the sky, the narrow gravel path leading away from it, and the small concrete structure at the end of the path. Beyond the edges of the walking path, there appeared to be nothing at all, only the gray of a fog that wasn’t a fog.

Tom coughed, choking on the blood in his mouth. He rolled on his side and spit out as much as he could, wondering how he could stop the flow. He gingerly touched the ragged skin of his torn cheeks, then decided he knew enough about his wounds. As his breathing and heart rate settled to a slower pace, it occurred to him that he might be able to make an adjustment to the reality of his body. His shape had shifted into different forms already along the path to the Road, and he had been able to fly, so it seemed reasonable to guess that he might be able to repair himself.

He closed his eyes, ignoring the pain and the blood, and focused his gaze internally, taking deep breaths to calm himself. The creatures in the house might well be making their way downstairs to finish him off, but he had to take this moment to find out what he could do about his injuries. He tried to visualize his normal face without the injuries, and how his body usually felt without the pain, and a healing light that flowed into his body with every inhalation.

The blood stopped flowing. He touched his face, and the holes in his cheeks were gone, leaving only smooth skin and the rough stubble that grew when he didn’t shave for a while. The stubble seemed like an odd detail to carry into this world, but he assumed it was habit; he knew he hadn’t shaved recently, so it made sense to have stubble. His body still ached with a variety of new pains, but everything seemed to be in working order. He swallowed and stood up, the gravel crunching beneath him as he turned to study the concrete building at the end of the path. A white steel door, punctuated with spots of brown rust, was set into the front of the structure at an angle like the entrance to a storm cellar. The door beckoned Tom to open it.

The heavy door creaked and screamed in rusty horror when Tom braced his feet and heaved on it, forcing the door back until its weight carried it the rest of the way over with a dull boom.

Tom felt dizzy as his mind tried to adjust to the view on the other side of the door. Where he had expected to see a dark interior or steps leading down into a concrete cellar or a bunker, he now saw a stark desert landscape lit by lightning that made the shadows of the twisted bare trees dance with each flash. The desert was at the end of a short tunnel that looked like it was part of a cave. After a moment, he remembered the scenery from a previous visit that seemed a long time ago in another life. The desert was in a place where he would not be able to heal any injuries as easily as he had on the Road. This was the back door into another world.

Stronghold.

ROSE tried to relax her jaw muscles. Surprised by the fact that she could still breathe while trapped within her foam cocoon, she had gradually tried to loosen her tense muscles and extend her wait for the inevitable time when her air supply would run out. The fear of being buried alive to suffocate in the foam had reactivated her childhood habit of clenching and grinding her teeth, but now that her initial fear had passed, her face relaxed, and she was able to gain control of herself again. Her arms were numb from being held up in front of her face for so long.

She wished she could tell if her friends were all right. And what about the rest of her people waiting nearby? She could sense nothing through the thick foam that held her immobile, like a fly trapped in amber. She heard nothing but her breathing and her heartbeat. Instead of the expected darkness, she was able to see a few inches in front of her face because the white foam was luminescent, but it merely gave her a visual confirmation that she was trapped.

A bubbling hiss vibrated through her cocoon. Thoughts of death danced in her mind. Was that the sound of water pouring through the tunnel? Could the foam be on fire? But no, the foam seemed to be loosening its grip, allowing her to wriggle around a bit. Her numb arms tingled as sensation began to return. Something bumped the side of her head, and she saw Frida’s hand twisting in the grip of the foam, gradually pulling away like a snake disappearing into a hole in the ground. So, at least Frida was alive—for now.

The foam continued to soften, oozing down past her face to disappear quickly into low vents on the rock walls. She gasped, then inhaled deeply of the stuffy air in the tunnel. Blinking, she wiped sticky liquid away from her eyes, and saw Lebowski standing a few feet away, looking back toward the elevator. Tom lay facedown on the floor, but he appeared to be breathing. She started to say something to Lebowski about Tom, but could only gasp when she saw the apparition that had caught Lebowski’s attention.

“Janus, my old friend,” said Hermes, casually stepping out of the elevator. “I suspected you’d be one of the intruders.”

Rose didn’t know why Hermes was referring to Lebowski as Janus, but she didn’t care. She had to plan an escape. They had bombs to place and a data center to destroy. They would only need a few minutes if Lebowski could delay Hermes long enough without having one of his blackouts.

Hermes struck a confident pose with his hands on his hips, taking a moment to study Lebowski. “You remind me of the original Janus, who also had two faces: one for the sunrise and one for the sunset. He was the patron of the beginning and end of all things. How appropriate that you should be here now to witness the end of Tom Eliot.” Hermes casually strolled toward them as the foam continued to dissipate. “Which of your faces will you show me now? And why are you so silent? Have you realized that you’re trapped?”

“I knew Telemachus’s messenger boy would come around eventually,” Lebowski said, stepping sideways to block the middle of the narrow passage with his body. “I keep hoping you’ll learn the error of your ways one day, but there seems little hope of that at this point.”

“I like to be on the winning side,” Hermes said, slowing as he neared Lebowski.

“You only think that Telemachus is winning because he controls you, man. There are others who would disagree with his point of view.”

“You refer to Alioth and his Traditionals? They would never accept me. They would never be able to trust me. Termination is my only way out of this business unless I exterminate Tom Eliot. And I certainly don’t think you and your little pals have any chance of stopping Telemachus.”

Rose wished she could do something for Tom, but he was still out cold on the floor, and there was little she could do with Hermes standing there. Her talents would be better used elsewhere, and a distraction might help Tom more than anything else they could do right now. She exchanged a glance with Frida and subtly nodded in the direction of the tunnel exit. Frida blinked in response. They would only get one chance.

Hermes glanced around Lebowski at the two women. “I wouldn’t try it if I were you. I’m faster and stronger than you are, and I don’t have to kill you. I can turn you over to the security forces at the top of the dam. They’ll take you to the rehab facility, and you’ll become good citizens again. On the other hand, if you defy me, I’ll break both of you in half before you reach the end of the tunnel.”

Rose looked at Frida again.

“It’s your choice,” Hermes said.

Frida silently looked at Tom for a moment, then nodded at Rose with a grim expression.

“Run!” Rose yelled.

As if the movement had been rehearsed, Rose and Frida sprinted toward the exit as Lebowski spun around and planted his foot in Hermes’ face.

THE air reeked of dead fish. Tom wrinkled his nose, carefully placing his feet on the rough floor in the darkness as he made his way toward the mouth of the cave. He had stumbled on a rock outcropping when he’d stepped through the steel door behind the Victorian house, and he didn’t relish the idea of falling here. He felt as if something was watching him, and he heard tiny chittering noises from creatures that scuttled along the rocky floor. He could only guess where the fishy odor might be coming from as he walked with his arms outstretched to guide him along the bumpy walls. A cold wind moaned through the mouth of the tunnel, increasing for a moment whenever lightning flashed across the sky.

He continued walking until he realized that the mouth of the cave wasn’t getting any closer. Distracted by this realization, he hit his head on a stalactite and stopped, clutching his sore head until the little popping lights faded from his vision.

“Mind your head,” said Magnus. At least, it sounded like Magnus. Squinting in the darkness, Tom saw a faint silver aura in the shape of a man wearing a cloak.

“Thanks,” said Tom, allowing a wave of relief to wash over him. He wouldn’t be alone here after all, and Magnus would know how to get him out of the cave. He cleared his throat, trying to control the emotion in his voice. “Where have you been?”

Magnus chuckled. “Busy. But you’ve been making good progress without me, I see.”

“Have I? Then why can’t I get out of this cave?”

“Because there isn’t any cave here. It’s all in your mind.”

“I’m trapped in my own head?”

“You and everyone else. Look, you’ve found the back door into Stronghold, and that’s a great thing. A wonderful thing. Dead Man created Stronghold, and this back door was his failsafe until the AIs found out about it. The house and its watchdogs are there to keep the riffraff out, although some things have changed since he built it. We can’t explain a lot of things that happen along the Road. Anyway, the main thing is that you’re here, and that you can get the jewel from the Tree of Dreams. But you should have crossed straight into Stronghold when you opened the door behind the house. This cave is all your idea. It’s what you expected to see.”

Tom considered that for a moment. “Can you get me out?”

“No. You must create your own path.”

“Then how will you get across?”

“I can’t. Help is coming, but you’ll have to use your power ally to create a bridge for them. You can cross between the worlds, but no one else can. You’ll have to face your own death and draw power from it, so that you can survive.”

“Will you be waiting for me on the other side?”

Magnus hesitated before answering. “Someday, Tom. Not in Stronghold.”

Tom had to ask one more thing that had been bothering him. “What happened during your fight with Hermes? Did he—?”

“Just remember,” Magnus said, interrupting him, “death here is very real. You can draw energy from the Road, but Stronghold is the opposite—it’s a place of death. The AIs made it that way. For you, this is both a blessing and a curse. I’m sure you can understand why.”

Tom gasped as the silver outline of Magnus began to fade. “Wait. Are you just leaving me here?”

“I was never here,” Magnus said, and his glow faded from view.

ROSE and Frida were standing at the far end of the 650- foot-long Nevada wing of the dam’s power plant, where half of the eight huge hydroelectric generators were humming with life. The concrete box that surrounded the enormous chamber made it feel like a crypt, and Rose was quite aware that they were deep beneath millions of tons of concrete that held back enough water pressure to kill all of them if any of the dam walls failed after the explosions. Such a failure was unlikely, but the vibrations in the soles of her boots, and the sounds behind the walls, were an uncomfortable reminder of their hazardous position. Somewhere above or below them, water from Lake Mead thundered beyond the walls to drive the generators and produce electrical power. They had placed explosive charges at the base of each generator and in a few other strategic locations, hoping that some of them would remain hidden if Hermes or his troops were able to perform a search before the timers detonated the charges.

“We’re done in here,” Frida said, reaching around Helix to check the rest of the charges in her backpack. Helix helped by gnawing playfully on her hand. “We’ve got twenty minutes to set the rest of the charges in the data center and get the hell out of here.”

“Or die trying,” Rose said.

Frida jogged toward the rear door that led to the nexus facility. “You’re cheerful today.”

Running beside Frida, Rose jerked a thumb over her shoulder, back the way they had come. “I don’t hear them fighting anymore in the tunnel. Hermes must be on his way.”

Frida stumbled and nearly fell over as she glanced back. “Tom! What about Tom? We have to help him.”

Rose stopped to grab Frida’s shoulder and urge her toward the portal to the nexus. “We are helping him, and we can’t stop now.”

Frida licked her lips, glancing from Rose to the tunnel and back again, then clenched her teeth and nodded, turning toward the portal.

Rose was ready with the EMP gun in her hand. “We just have to hope that Tom can help us.”

CONFUSED, Tom stood still, his hands in his pockets, watching as the cave dissolved around him. Chunks of rock simply disappeared from the walls, allowing weak flashes of light from a black sky to enter along with puzzle-piece views of the twisted Stronghold landscape. High overhead, spiderwebs of colored light slowly blossomed against the velvety darkness, then faded back into the eternal night. As more of the cave walls vanished, Tom heard the cold wind moaning through the burnt husks of the deformed and stunted trees that dotted the terrain. Shambling creatures lurched from one shelter to another, from boulder to tree to ravine, as hundreds of eyes studied them from patches of ground fog that clumped together in the low spots like wads of dirty cotton. The air smelled of smoke and decay.

Tom suddenly felt heavier, and his field of view narrowed to a broad slit in front of his face. He gasped, then realized he was now wearing plate armor exactly like the silver suit he had worn when Sandoval and Magnus introduced him to Stronghold. Entering via the sim chair in the old missile silo, he had been given a choice of virtual costumes to choose from, any of which would seem appropriate in the virtual fantasy world that Dead Man had created to train his AIs. Glancing down, he saw the heavy broadsword hanging from a belt at his left side, and it felt oddly reassuring when he rested his left hand on the pommel.

The cave walls were gone, and he was surrounded by lonely desert terrain. His feet shifted on sand and gravel when he turned to survey his environment, aware that any of the creatures he had seen in the distance might now be stalking him, waiting for a mistake so that they could move in and kill him. He also remembered that the broad cobblestone road had provided some protection from the roaming monsters, but that road was nowhere in sight.

Tom stopped his slow circling movement when he saw six brilliant streaks of light moving toward him. The long lines of color left trails that curved down from the sky at the horizon, hurtling toward him just a few feet off the ground. He braced himself, wondering if he could dodge the missiles or lie flat to let them pass overhead, but his question was answered when the glowing streaks slowed and coalesced into six armored riders on fierce horses. Fuzzy light balls over their heads showed Tom their names along with a string of other identifying characters.

The armored nightmare at the front of the pack was Alioth. The dark blue steel that covered his body seemed to radiate an inner light, and the sky-blue beams that shot straight out of his eyes were locked on Tom, bathing him in blue. Then other beams—red, green, yellow—were directed at Tom, lighting him up like a statue at night in Marinwood.

The hooves of their armored black horses thumped the earth with impatience, breath steaming from their nostrils, their wild eyes visible through the round holes in their black helmets. Each rider had his own color of leather and steel. Their upper bodies, covered with spikes and cutting blades, made their large forms appear even more ominous. Each had a broadsword with a hilt made from a human skull, but the weapons were slung by their saddles as if they couldn’t conceive of Tom being any kind of a threat. Their battle helms were decorated with colored plumes that bounced softly in the cold wind beneath their ID icons. Studying their names, Tom noticed that Telemachus was not among them. Directly behind Alioth were Dubhe, Merak, and Phecda, who all focused their attention on Tom. In the back, Megrez and Alkaid scanned the terrain with steady sweeps of their laser eyes, sending twisted creatures scuttling for the shadows wherever they looked. The AIs knew that nothing would attack their group in this place, but they remained vigilant nonetheless.

Tom swallowed hard and took a deep breath, trying to keep the trembling in his knees from rattling the armor plate on his legs. If he had ever needed help from Magnus, Lebowski, Dead Man, or even Rocco the vulture, it was now. He knew there wasn’t any possible way he could fight six of the seven Dominion AIs all at once with any chance of survival. He didn’t even know if he could defeat one.