The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,144
noise woke her. The hallway was even darker now. Her heart pounded in fear.
The sound came from the shadows ahead.
Whistling laughter.
She had heard it before, out in the city. Goose bumps pebbled her flesh. She focused on the source of that laughter.
What is—?
Then it appeared out of the gloom, shedding its shadows.
A glowing bronze boy shambled into view, its head hanging crookedly. It dragged a leg, as broken as hers. Fire and smoke haloed its form. From its lips, frozen in a grinning rictus, another whistling cackle flowed.
The boy came straight at her, perhaps drawn by her gasping breaths.
Once it was close enough, she tried to kick it away with her good leg, but molten hands caught her ankle and tightened. She screamed as fiery bronze burned through Kevlar down to flesh. She writhed, knocking it over on its side. But still it held. Its limbs paddled in the air. Then slowly, like the guttering torches, it stopped and went still with one last thin reed of laughter.
She tried to loosen its grip—then new movement ahead froze her.
Out of the gloom, two new figures appeared, far smaller, but their surfaces glowed even hotter. They crawled toward her, two bronze babies, a boy and a girl.
No . . .
A moan escaped her. She tried to get away, but one leg was shattered, the other trapped, pinned by hundreds of pounds of bronze. She scooted against the wall, turning her face away.
The boy reached her broken leg, then climbed. Each touch burned through the fabric of her trousers, searing her skin. The girl clambered straight between her legs and crawled upward, tracing a fiery path.
Nehir shook her head—not at the blistering flesh, but at what had come for her. Demonic mockeries of her two babies. She cried and writhed. With effort, she could have knocked them away, but even now, she could not bring herself to do so.
If this is Allah’s punishment . . .
If this is all I’m allowed . . .
The two bronze babes reached her bosom, melting through her armor, reaching her skin, and continuing to scorch their way down toward her heart.
So be it . . .
She reached her arms and cradled her two children closer. Pain and shock eventually blurred her vision. She stared down at their soft little bodies. Feeling them settle and grow quiet.
My little girl, Huri . . . my sweet little boy.
She held them until they all stopped moving.
47
June 26, 8:15 P.M. WEST
High Atlas Mountains, Morocco
Four minutes to go . . .
Gray led the others down the gold stairway. All around, Tartarus had grown darker as torches flickered out. He pictured the closed valve, shutting off the fuel source to the city. But dangers persisted.
As they raced down the stairs, Kowalski’s weapon fired in bursts all around. The FRAG-12 shells blasted back anything that threatened: a bronze centaur, a sleek hound, a flame-maned lion. Still, even these attacks seemed far more sluggish as the Promethean flames that fueled the guardians dimmed.
Gray noticed that several had retreated to their bronze pedestals, perhaps following some predetermined program to return for refueling when their power ebbed.
He had no time to give these mysteries more than a passing thought. Back at the foundry’s radiative pool, he had noticed pipes running from Hunayn’s fail-safe device down into the volatile oil. If that pool blew, especially considering all the residual oil still in the city’s plumbing, the explosion would end up being the mother of all air-fuel bombs.
It could blow the top off this mountain.
We don’t want to be here when that happens.
Gray finally neared the bottom of the golden staircase and checked his watch.
Three minutes . . .
Bailey drew alongside him, followed by Seichan and Maria, who practically carried Mac between them. The climatologist’s face was tight with pain, pale with blood loss and shock.
Bailey searched ahead and was astute enough by now to reason out Gray’s plan. “How are we supposed to get out that exit?”
“What exit?” Kowalski asked, panting up behind them, still watching for any threat, his weapon braced on his hip.
“Down there.” Bailey pointed to the dark lake, to the water still flowing in from five directions to feed the slowly churning whirlpool in the city’s center. “Down the maw of Charybdis.”
Kowalski frowned. “I’ve already had my swim for the day, and I don’t feel like being sucked down to nowhere.”
“Smell the water,” Gray said. “It’s fresh seawater. This is just one big circulating pump. From the ocean to here and back out again.”