“Bernie—”
“Hong Kong, for instance?”
“Monarch and Apex may have some of the same interests,” Madison said. “But they’re not the same.”
“They both do shady, covert things with Titans,” Bernie said. “But I see this is bothering you. I’ll stop. I just ask questions. It’s what I do.”
“I get that,” Madison said. “But I’m not so interested in questions right now. I want answers. If you have any, please stop hinting around and just say them, okay? Do you have any actual evidence of what you’re suggesting? And don’t answer my question with another question.”
Bernie drew back a little. “Touché,” he said. “No proof, no. I get it, I get it. A hundred questions don’t add up to a single answer. You think I don’t know that by now? You think if I really had the answers…” He broke off and put his hand on the flask in his holster.
“Okay,” he finally said. “But I’m trying to get them. I am. I’m tired of questions too.” He nodded at her phone. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” Madison said. “It’s not working.”
“Is it out of charge?” Josh asked.
“No,” she said. “It’s on. It’s just not working.”
“Electromagnetic fields,” Bernie said. “From the train—more likely the tunnel. Oh, man. We’ll probably all have brain cancer in a week.”
“Yeah,” Josh said. “I’m sure they didn’t think of that when they built this.”
“You see any other people get on, Tap Water?” Bernie asked, caustically.
“Oh,” Josh said, frowning. A few minutes later Madison noticed him pressing on his head with his fingertips.
Apex Facility, Hong Kong
Madison knew they were approaching their destination by the incremental deceleration of the train. Josh felt it too, enough to wake him from his nap.
Bernie, studying his notes, looked ahead, down the tunnel.
“Okay,” he said, as their deceleration intensified. “Okay, slowing down.”
They came to a stop in front of a door identical to the one at the Pensacola end. It slid open, and another crane picked them up and lowered them toward the floor.
“Attention,” loudspeakers blared. “Shipping pods arriving.” Then the message repeated in Cantonese.
Yeah, Madison thought. But with some unexpected cargo.
After they were settled to the floor, the doors opened. The three of them peered out. A ramp rose to meet the car, leading down into yet another gigantic chamber, although the light was so low it was difficult to see exactly how big it was. Behind them the wall seemed to be stone, but everything in front of them was metal, and the place had a distinctly industrial feel. But there didn’t seem to be anything in it except the maglev cars that had just arrived.
“Going in?” Bernie asked.
“Yup,” Madison replied.
They stepped out, and almost immediately the car doors slid shut behind them.
“No!” Josh said. “I swear, every time. Doors hate us.”
“Oh, yeah,” Bernie said, staring out into the shadowed space.
Madison continued to examine the chamber, or hangar, or whatever it was.
Bernie suddenly shouted; echoes came back as if he had yelled into the Grand Canyon.
“Oh, my God!” Madison said. What the hell was he doing? The point was not to get noticed here, right?
“It’s so massive. It’s stupid,” Bernie said, as if that explained something.
“What is this place?” Madison wondered.
“If there’s a corporate-friendly term for sacrifice pit,” Bernie said, “I’d say we are in it.” He waved his hand at something on the floor.
She had been wrong; there was something else in the room, lying just a few feet away. It looked like an eyeball the size of a cantaloupe that had been ripped out of its socket, along with about a yard of optic nerve.
“Oh, God,” Madison said. “That smells.” She knelt down to look at it, realizing as she did that the stink was far too pervasive to be just the whatever-it-was. The air was heavy with the sickly-sweet metallic scent of blood she was all too familiar with.
“Smells like an abattoir,” Bernie said.
“A what?” Josh asked.
“A slaughterhouse,” Bernie said, pulling his finger across his throat. “Look.”
Madison saw it, too. In the dim light you could miss it if the place didn’t stink so much.
Bloodstains, and lots of them.
Loudspeakers suddenly came on, belling out an alarm, the kind that made Madison think of heavy equipment operating or a warning to get the hell away from whatever was making that sound.
“That’s not good,” Madison said. “Bernie—”
“I already hate this place,” Bernie said, walking forward. Red warning lights were now flashing everywhere—and then brighter lights snapped on.
“Warning,” a woman’s voice came over the loudspeaker. “Project M demonstration will commence on floor A in one minute. All personnel are to stay clear of the arena area.”
In the brighter light, Madison saw there were a number of large metal doors set in the walls, each numbered in large white letters. Higher above, observation windows. Higher still, in the ceiling, a panel was opening, revealing an industrial fan. Not too far away, a little bunker was sunken into the floor with glass observation ports all around.
Arena, the voice had said. Somebody was about to watch something happening here, but what? Sports were played in arenas, but somehow, she felt there was not about to be a pick-up game of indoor soccer starting up. Fights? Fights happened in arenas. Boxing matches, wrestling, mixed-martial arts. Who—or what—was fighting here?
Her eyes returned to the bloodstains on the floor. There was a lot of blood. Not just buckets, but dump trucks full.
She thought about the maglev cars, and their cargo of Skullcrawler eggs, and did not like the picture that was emerging.
First she felt a hum and then an aggressive vibration in the floor beneath her feet, and then a huge circular hatchway opened, near enough to them that they had to stumble back. And from below that cavernous opening, a platform began to rise. With something on it.
It was big, but Madison couldn’t make out what it was through all of the steam surrounding it. What she could see was sort of a mound, with strange squared-off bristles or projections sticking up from it. Like
