“I don’t know; there’s lots of cover in here,” Killough said drily. “Speaking as one of the people in the light armor, cover sounds better than wide open corridors.”
“Yes, but think of the property damage,” the Marine replied. “We’ll take it out of your paycheck.”
“I think I might still be legally dead,” the spy said. “They’ll have to fix that before they can dock my pay!”
Roslyn smiled to herself as she moved with the Marines. At least everyone was in good spirits, even with the vaguely depressing silence of the mechanical plant. This floor was almost entirely shut down at this time of year, it seemed.
She had an overlay of the map they’d put together of what they thought was under the park on her HUD, and slowed to a halt after they’d circled around a quarter of the bunker.
“Stop,” she ordered. “The reservoir is directly west of us. Most likely the lab is on either the north or south side of the reservoir, dug out in the same project and built at the same time. So, we are now into the area where I expect to see the access point.”
She gestured to the south, where several massive pipes emerged from the exterior bunker wall.
“That’s the reservoir link,” she reminded them. “We know they’re using the drainage tunnels to the reservoir itself as passageways, so we’ve got to be close.”
“Knight, those drones can rig up a short-range penetrating-radar pulse, right?” Mooren asked. “Sequence them into the wall. I’m betting some of this wall moves aside with the right commands, but we don’t have the network codes.”
“Setting them up,” the Corporal replied. “This will take a minute. Do we want to sweep the rest of the west wall while I work?”
“Don’t split up,” Roslyn and Mooren said simultaneously.
Several of the Marines very clearly swallowed chuckles in response to that.
“Form up around Knight,” Mooren ordered. “Keep your eyes peeled and watch for incoming hostiles. We don’t know what kind of defenses or security are in place, but there is no way they don’t know we’re in the treatment plant.”
The drones converged on them once again. Each of them flew forward and attached itself to the wall as Roslyn watched. Within a few moments, they’d formed a wave pattern on the wall, and Knight made a small gesture with her armored hand.
Roslyn didn’t feel or see anything, but new data immediately appeared on her HUD as the maps updated with the radar data. Knight had calibrated the pulses carefully, and only about ten meters behind the wall was illuminated—and that was enough.
“All right. Everyone stand back,” Roslyn ordered as she studied the location of the passageway. “Like you said, there’s almost certainly some kind of code or command we can give, but we don’t have time for that.”
The Marines got out of her way in a flash. Every one of them had seen a Combat Mage make a door before, and they were not going to be in the way. It took Bolivar a few seconds longer to realize what was going on, but ten seconds after her HUD updated, Roslyn had a clear line of sight to the wall concealing the door.
Explosives would be equally brute-force as Roslyn’s plan, but they would take longer. Time was everything and Roslyn was worried. They needed the data on the damn toxin to save the affected people who were still alive.
She didn’t know how much time those people had left—but she did know that none of them deserved what the Prometheus Mages had done to them. She let that anger flow through her, pushing her power as she flung her magic against the concrete barrier in front of her.
Concrete could never stand against a trained Mage. The wall was dust in moments, revealing a heavy steel vault door concealed behind it.
The door didn’t last much longer as Roslyn stepped forward with blades of force answering her will. Steel parted like paper against an edge forged of pure force, and the heavy vault door fell backward into the tunnel.
She exhaled a long breath and nodded to herself, holding a shield across the entrance as the Marines moved up.
“No lights,” Mooren murmured. “Probably killed them when they realized we were coming. Go thermal, people. They’re definitely waiting for us.”
30
Roslyn waited for the Marines to lead the way again, falling once more into the middle of the column. The dark tunnel was foreboding, even with the thermal vision and infrared lights lighting it up ahead of them.
It descended at a shallow angle toward the reservoir. Initially, one side of it was clearly the outside of the big pipes moving water up to the treatment plant. The infrared flashlights only gave them fifty meters or so of visibility as they headed deeper, and a deep chill settled into Roslyn’s spine.
“Think it’s supposed to be this creepy?” she murmured.
“Nah, but it’s a nice side effect from their point of view,” Killough said. “Keeps us on edge.”
“We’ve got a break in the tunnel ahead,” Knight reported. “It curves right, and the descent gets steeper. Watch your step. This tunnel definitely wasn’t meant for vehicles.”
“Move up to the turn and hold position,” Mooren ordered. “Keep together.”
That kept getting reiterated, but Roslyn understood. They had too small of a force to risk getting separated when they knew almost nothing about the layout of the complex they’d entered.
The turn was enough to detach the tunnel from the pipes as Knight had said. The path curved away from the reservoir systems and headed deeper into the ground.
“I think you might be wrong on the vehicles,” Roslyn noted, flashing her infrared lamp over the roof. “There’s a power line up there for lights and a tram of some kind. Permanent installation to make the transit up and down easier.
“Probably means this trip is longer than we thought.”
“We thought it
