Max sagged back into the chair. It had been the worst pounding he had ever taken. Even more savage than when he was in a Vietcong prison, and there they had taken turns so that the blows went on for an hour or more. He felt around his mouth, moving two teeth freely with his tongue. It had been a minor miracle that his nose hadn’t broken or one of the body blows hadn’t caused his heart to fibrillate and stop.
The spot where they had cut out the bioelectric transponder was a dull ache compared to the rest of his body. His chest was a mottled sea of bruised flesh, and he could only imagine the damage done to his face.
Well, I wasn’t all that pretty to begin with, he thought grimly, and the wry smile that followed brought fresh blood from the cuts on his lips.
Max promised himself ten minutes to recover. Any longer and he would have cramped up to the point of immobility. There was a glimmer of hope amid his pain—at least they hadn’t brought Kyle to this hellhole. He was back in Greece. Even in the Responsivists’ grasp, he was relatively safe. Max clutched that thought to his heart and let it buoy his spirits.
By his estimation, six minutes had passed when he started working on the loosened ropes. He had created enough slack to work his wrists free of them so he could use his hands to pull away the ropes wound around his chest. Finally, he was able to untie his legs and stand. He groped for the back of the chair to keep from toppling over.
“I don’t feel so good,” he muttered aloud, and waited for his blurred vision to clear.
He eased open the heavy door as quietly as he could. The hallway was empty. The industrial fluorescent fixtures bolted to the concrete ceiling cast stark pools of light interspersed with deep shadows, giving the cinder-block walls a dingy look despite their apparent newness.
Max balled the piece of paper into the lock so the door wouldn’t close, and, keeping in a low crouch because his muscles wouldn’t let him stand upright, he padded down the hallway, making certain he wasn’t leaving a telltale trail of blood.
At the first intersection, he heard faint muffled voices to his left, so he turned right, casting an eye backward every few seconds. He passed an occasional unlabeled door. Pressing an ear to the cool metal, he heard nothing beyond and moved on.
It was the dankness of the air and the fact he’d seen no windows that made him think he was underground. He had no direct proof but didn’t doubt his assessment.
Turning two more times in the monochromatic maze, he came to another door and could hear the whine of machinery inside. He tried the handle and it turned easily. He opened it a crack, and the level of noise rose in timbre and volume. He could see no light escaping from the room, so he assumed it was deserted. He ducked in quickly and closed the door behind him. Groping blindly, he found a light switch.
Arc lights snapped on, revealing a cavernous space sunk below the level of the floor he was standing on. He was in the control room overlooking the facility’s powerhouse. Behind thick insulated glass were four huge jet engines bolted to the floor, fed by a tangle of fuel lines and exhaust ducts. Mated to each was an electrical generator. The assemblies were slightly larger than a locomotive, and although only one of the turbines was in operation the room buzzed and crackled with undisguised power.
Either this place is massive, Max thought, casting an expert eye over the room again, because they can produce enough juice for a couple thousand people, or they have some other, unknown use for this much electricity.
He mentally filed away the incongruity and retreated back into the hallway.
With no visible cameras and no guards patrolling the corridors, Max had a sense that Kovac must feel pretty secure here. It was another fact that he tucked away as he sought an exit from the labyrinth.
He finally came to a door marked STAIRWELL, but, when he opened it, he discovered the stairs led only downward.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” he muttered, and headed deeper into the facility.
The scissor-style stairs zigzagged four stories before coming to an end on a dimly lit landing. The only door led into an even-darker tunnel that ran perpendicular to the stairwell. Unlike the other areas Max had seen, the perfectly circular tunnel was of rough-hewn native rock and was just large enough for him to stand. He could see where some sort of machine, like a continuous miner or a tunnel borer, had left ragged toolmarks on the dark stone. There were no lights, so he had no way of knowing how long the tunnel was or what it was for. The only clues were thick copper wires strung along the ceiling from ceramic insulators. There had to have been a hundred of them, each carefully spaced from its neighbor. His engineering background told him they could easily take the electrical load of the generators he’d seen on the upper level.
“What are you supposed to do, my beauty?” he mused aloud. But, of course, there was no answer.
He considered following the wire, blindly hoping it led to an exit, but the stillness of the air made him think that the tunnel had no outlet. He also hadn’t forgotten he was at least fifty feet underground, possibly more.
Max set himself the arduous task of climbing the stairs. His body protested every step, and, as the exertion deepened his breathing, it felt like a vise was clamped around his chest. Even if his ribs weren’t fully broken, he laid a silent wager that a couple of them sported hairline cracks.
He was panting when he reached the upper landing and had to clamp his elbows to the sides of his chest to ease away some of the pain.
Pressing his ear to the door, he heard muffled voices, and, as they faded, he thought he heard one person say to another, "... sky two days from now, so we’ll need ...” He waited another few moments before opening the door. The hallway was deserted. He couldn’t even hear the echo of their footfalls.
Padding silently, he renewed his search for a way out. He was halfway down one long hallway when he heard people approaching. Their movements were swift and sure, making him think it might be Kovac and his goons heading back to his cell for another go at him, although only a half hour had passed since they had left him. Knowing he couldn’t run even if he wanted to, Max had no choice but to duck through one of the metal doors lining the corridor.
He held the knob open as he closed the door so the lock couldn’t engage and stood pressed against it as the footfalls drew nearer. It was only after they strode past that Max glanced over his shoulder at the darkened room. By the glow of a small light plugged into an outlet, he saw six cots laid out in rows and the obvious outline of six people asleep on top of them. One person must have been the lightest sleeper in the world because he suddenly grunted and shot bolt upright, peering myopically into the gloom.
“Steve?” he called out.
“Yes,” Max ans
wered at once. “Go back to sleep.”
The youngish man fell back onto his cot and rolled away from Max, his breathing relaxing in an instant.
Max couldn’t say the same about his own breathing. He felt certain his heart was going to hammer through his ribs at any moment, although he was grateful for the anesthetic effects of the adrenaline jolt his near discovery had sent into his veins. He gave it a few more moments before sliding back out of the dormitory room.