“There’s a flashlight,” Mahmoud’s voice called out, “in the wall by the entrance.”
Ethan turned, guessing roughly where the entrance to the chamber was, and felt his way there with his arms outstretched. His fingers touched the walls of the chamber as he fumbled until he felt the wall vanish into the tunnel. Something brushed past him again in the darkness, disappearing almost before he had registered its presence.
“I can reach it,” he said, turning sideways.
Ethan struggled across to the opposite wall and groped in the blackness for several seconds until he found the recess where Mahmoud must have stored the flashlight. Quickly, he reached inside and grabbed a cylindrical object, turning as his thumb found a switch on the barrel. The beam burst into life, cutting a swathe of light through the cramped chamber.
Ethan blinked the grit from his eyes, sweeping the beam in Rachel’s direction. He saw her crouched beside the crates with Hassim, the scientist’s arms wrapped protectively around her.
“Get out of here, both of you!” Ethan shouted, pointing the flashlight beam down the tunnel to guide them.
Hassim lurched to his feet and hurried out of the chamber, with Rachel close behind.
“Mahmoud?” Ethan called, sweeping the beam to his left.
“Get out of here,” Mahmoud called, “they’ll hit the building again! Go now!”
Ethan was about to turn and run when he remembered his rucksack.
“My camera,” he said, rushing forward and directing the beam at the chair where his belongings had been deposited. He stopped dead in his tracks as he saw that the rucksack had vanished. Mahmoud appeared through the dust clouds, his face wracked with anger.
“Go, now! To hell with the rucksack!”
Ethan remembered his fingers brushing across someone in the chamber before he’d found the flashlight, and a shiver rippled down his spine. He turned the beam around the chamber before pointing it down the tunnel. In the light, he saw a severed electrical cable dangling from the tunnel ceiling. Before either Ethan or Mahmoud could say a word, a scream echoed down the tunnels toward them.
“Rachel!”
Ethan sprinted out of the chamber toward her voice. He was almost halfway down the tunnel when he saw something large crumpled on the ground before him. He leaped over the body, glimpsing Yossaf’s bearded face slick with blood.
Mahmoud skidded to a halt beside the body, and then shouted after Ethan.
“Wait! We’re not alone!”
Another scream came from the darkness ahead and Ethan ran toward it, all thoughts of his own safety suddenly vanquished by the fear that something was happening to Rachel. He rushed into the small antechamber halfway down the tunnel, the bouncing flashlight beam illuminating Hassim and Rachel as they fled down the tunnel ahead, and then something slammed into Ethan’s stomach with immense force, voiding the air from his lungs. The flashlight spun from his grip as he fell to the ground, chunks of dust and grit filling his mouth.
He heard a shout of fury as he rolled onto his back, struggling against the pain swelling in his abdomen while he fought to regain his feet. In the diffuse, shifting light of the rolling flashlight beam he saw Mahmoud and a stranger locked in a furious exchange of blows, primal growls of rage and fear filling the tunnel as though wild animals were fighting for their lives.
Ethan struggled to his feet and rushed forward as Mahmoud was beaten back into the darkened tunnel beyond by his assailant. Ethan could see his rucksack on the attacker’s back and a bolt of fury coursed through his veins. He grabbed the bag and yanked the man backward with all of his might.
The attacker turned, shifting his balance with lightning speed and unstoppable force as he gripped Ethan with hands sheathed in black leather gloves. Ethan felt his body being propelled backward as the attacker turned Ethan’s advantage into his own and hurled him into the wall of the antechamber. Ethan’s skull smacked into the wall, jarring his vision as his teeth clashed in his jaw with a sharp crack. The man released Ethan as he fell, twisting so that Ethan felt his grip on the rucksack weaken and the fabric slip from his fingers. In an instant, the attacker vanished into the adjoining tunnel.
Ethan struggled to regain his balance, but almost instantly the tunnel was rocked as another blast slammed into the earth above his head. The walls of the tunnel crumpled around him, the light from the flashlight almost completely lost as the main chamber collapsed, clouds of dust