15

Journey into the underworld

With the metal door closed, the hallway leading into Nai Orka was cast in darkness. No lights lined the hallway, no candles or torches hung on the bleak, bare metal walls. The only light within was a tiny beacon, a glowing green light, no bigger than the head of a pin, beckoning from the end of the hall. An eerie signal testifying the technology of generations long since past, a glowing souvenir of a power beyond imagination.

Micah searched through his pack in the dark and fished out a lantern, lighting it and casting the gray hallway in flickering orange light. The band moved forward towards the end of the hall, towards an open doorway from which the green beacon flashed. Boot heels clacked dully over the metal floor, throwing tinny echoes down the corridor. As they reached the doorway at the end of the hall, what stood beyond was a compact square-shaped chamber, perhaps little more than a yard wide and deep. At the back wall was the green light and beside the green light was a button. It seemed that the button had once borne ancient writing that had long worn off with time. Ojinna exchanged a glance with Micah before reaching forward and pressing the button. The door behind them slid closed and the chamber suddenly lurched with a loud groan, making all five of the chamber’s occupants cry out and shuffle to regain their footing. Then the chamber began its descent.

The floor beneath them began to slowly sink, rocking and stuttering occasionally from the ancient mechanics. It was taking them down into the depths of the ruins, an immeasurable distance underground as the chamber held no windows and its descent remained unsteady the entire way down. At last the chamber reached its destination, rocking and jerking to a sudden halt, again jarring the five people inside against the chamber’s walls and each other.

With a loud metal crunch, the wall that bore the button and tiny green light slid sideways. The five slowly filed out of the chamber into the huge cavern it had opened up to. Micah held up the lantern high above his head in an attempt to illuminate as much of the vast tunnel as possible, letting his wide eyes soak in their bizarre and disquieting surroundings.

They were not in the ruined city of Nai Orka, but underneath it, in some strange kind of tunnel, or tomb, or sewer, or in the horrifying aftermath of the Great Death, perhaps it was a place that had become a fusion of all three. The ground beneath their feet was a hard, smooth surface of stone. Glimpses of large metal rails running through the center of the tunnel could be seen peaking out through the wreckage and mud. The sides of the tunnel held raised stone platforms that were crumbling and littered with large chunks of metal or rubble in numerous places. The middle of the tunnel sunk lower and within this ravine was a putrid swamp of twisted metal and brown water. Piles of metal frames of ancient behemoth machines rose from the river, stacked and crushed over one another, all covered in rubble and stone, as if they had been dropped out of the sky, or perhaps had crashed through the tunnel’s ceiling from the city above to land atop the line of machines that had already lined the rails below. At the bottom of the pile were long, squarish tubes of steel either sitting along the tracks, or some tumbled sideways off of them. Crushing and stacked above these steel tubes were smaller metal frames, some more box-shaped, some more ovoid. Large glass windows, mostly shattered now, stretched between the metal frames in the top portion of the machines, spanning large sections at the front and back and smaller sections on the sides. Underneath these machines were metal wheels dripping with an ancient gluey black material. Scattered inside the machines were bones, pieces and deformations of skeletons, skulls, ribs, legs, all picked over and scavenged. Rats, some as small as a fist and some as large as cats, and other nameless mutant rodents scurried over the platforms at the sides of the tunnel and inside the metal carriages; the animals avoided the thick, poisonous, rust-laden liquid that the machines stewed in. On occasion, a rat would scurry over a ancient surface that had worn too thin through time and would plummet into the river below. The rodent would splash and squeal before succumbing to a slow and draining death.

Death, it was everywhere. It was in the poison water, it was in the Old Gen machines, it was in the stale air. The tunnel was a piece of universe that held no life; it was a preservation of the devastation that had plagued the world generations ago; it was a vision of a very real and possible future of the extermination of the human race, of the end of existence. Ojinna crumbled to the ground onto her hands and knees, suddenly retching, her body shaking violently with a range and mix of emotions she had never felt before and couldn’t even identify. Lorelei suddenly turned to Nathan and clutched him desperately, pulling him close, pressing her face into his shoulder, weeping. Nathan held her, fighting back unexpected tears of his own.

Garret was the first to begin forward, the others frozen in awe and horror. “Come,” he called over his shoulder, swallowing back his own nausea and terror. “There must be a way up into the city. We don’t have much time.” He moved forward to the platform at the right side of the tunnel, trying not to look at the metal swamp to his left.

Nathan gently guided Lorelei in the direction the Garret had taken off. Micah bent beside Ojinna and helped her to her feet. She shook her head, keeping her eyes on the stone floor at her feet, and wiped inexplicable sweat from her brow that nearly froze in place on her skin.

The band followed Garret in single file down the narrow platform along the right side of the tunnel, sidestepping rubble and rodents, shivering and hugging their cloaks close to their bodies. Though the crumbled and packed ceiling of the tunnel, presumably the result of a cave in during the Great Death disaster, kept out all weather and light from the city above, the air seemed, if possible, even colder than it had out in the snow and ice, although the sludge sitting in the middle of the tunnel didn’t appear to have frozen. The tunnel was also ghostly quiet, except for the squeak and scuttle of rodents, and the echoing shuffle of the band of rebels trespassing within it.

Garret finally came to an impasse where a chunk of the platform had broken off into the swamp below. The only direction to go was to attempt scaling the mountain of twisted metal looming out of the poisonous water until they could reach another stretch of the platform suitable for traversing. So one by one they began climbing up onto the metal frames of the strange ancient carriages, careful to avoid holes in the metal eaten away from rust and shards of broken glass spilling from the windows. Upon this closer inspection of the vehicles, they caught a glimpse of the foreign advanced technology held within each decrepit machine, with the ruined upholstery inside revealing protruding metal springs, and the mechanical levers and wheels centered around one corner of the frames, and the curious black and gray elastic substances that sat on the bottom wheels, and the plastique surfaces that were deformed and melting from inside panels.

Garret quickly mastered the technique of climbing and maneuvering over the great machines and before long had distanced himself from the others by a good lead. He crawled along the metal frames using both his feet and hands like an animal. He was eager to escape this underground deathtrap and tried to distract himself by challenging his body and mind to move along the machines quicker than was probably wise. He would find an exit soon. He needed get out of there. Micah, still carrying the only source of light within the tunnel, attempted to follow Garret as fast as he could but began falling behind. Ojinna followed closely after Micah. Nathan and Lorelei fell behind all three of the others. Lorelei became winded quickly and with this particular terrain, it was impossible to carry her, so Nathan patiently waited for her and assisted her exertions in any way he could, steadying her arm, giving her a boost to reach higher ledges.

Nathan was beginning to have trouble seeing, as Micah continued to hurry on ahead with the lantern. Nathan and Lorelei were collecting numerous cuts and scratches from stray shards of metal and glass. He couldn’t be sure, but her cuts didn’t appear to be healing, trickles and ribbons of blood soon drawing webs over both of their hands.

Suddenly a loud, large splash followed by groaning metal sounded from down the tunnel, reverberating over the stone walls. Nathan turned towards Lorelei, finding he could barely see the reflection of her bright eyes in the dim lighting.

“What was that?” Lorelei whispered. Her features were cast in shadow, but Nathan could hear the terror in her voice.

“I don’t want to find out,” he replied quickly, taking hold of her arm and pulling her up onto the ledge of metal he was standing on. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

They scrambled as quickly as the could over the ancient machines, crawling over the roofs and jumping from the front end of one carriage onto the back ledge of the next, Nathan clutching Lorelei’s hand to help her. A thunderous rumble of crushed metal and sloshing water echoed behind them, some loud tidal wave racing through the tunnel towards them. Lorelei cried out and turned back to look over her shoulder. Nathan yanked hard on her arm pulling her attention forward again.

“Come on!” he urged.

She hurried after him. They both began screaming for their comrades, both to warn them and in a plea for help. Whatever was coming was coming fast. A menacing animal roar suddenly echoed through the tunnel over the splashing and squealing of large, powerful feet stomping through the water and metal. This time it was Nathan who turned, reaching behind him to help pull Lorelei onto the roof of one of the machines. As his head turned, he caught sight of the creature lumbering down the tunnel towards them. He could think of only one word to describe it: dragon. It was a giant lizard, scaled in black leathery skin that was dripping with poisonous sludge. The lizard was similar in shape to the ones that lived in the swamp south of Duster (certainly unlike any creature native to the north), but this one was far larger than any Nathan had ever laid eyes on. Including its body and sweeping tail, it was easily longer than the squarish metal tubes sitting on the rails at the bottom of the tunnel, which the beast stomped over like toys, and fatter than the metal tubes by far. The dragon had a long, triangular shaped head, whose nose swept out into a long point. As the beast opened its jaws to emit another growl, Nathan could see three rows of razor sharp teeth, all as long and thick as knives, and a fat black tongue that was possibly as long as a man is tall.

The beast slithered forward with incredible speed for its size, navigating through the familiar wreckage, and as it neared Nathan and Lorelei, it threw its girth against the mountain of machines, hard scales scraping metal. The ground beneath their feet shook violently and they both cried out. Nathan clutched desperately to a hold to regain his footing; Lorelei reached out as well, but her grip slipped and she was knocked off the carriage she stood on. She landed hard on the sinking roof of one of the metal tubes lining the bottom of the ravine, her left leg momentarily dipping into the poisonous water. The pool hissed, her skin immediately burning and she pulled her leg back, rolling away onto the metal roof. As she glanced down, she found the water had eaten a hole through her skirt and a patch of swollen red was burned into her flesh.

“Lori!” Nathan yelled out. She was scrambling up, trying to climb to a higher ledge. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the dragon circling back from its first pass, its long, scaly snout fixed on her.

Nathan vaulted down from the carriage he stood on, landing on a lower roof and sliding and rolling off of it, catching his limbs on metal and glass.

Lorelei saw the beast coming back, gliding through the acid sludge in a spray of poison rain. She climbed up onto the front ledge of a carriage stacked across the roof of the metal tube she stood on. The carriage’s ledge groaned in protest to her weight, but in her panicked state, she didn’t notice. As she hoisted herself up and propelled forward, the metal suddenly gave, her foot plummeting into the frame. Sharp, stubborn metal fought to bend itself back into place, stabbing into Lorelei’s ankle and locking it inside the machine. Lorelei stumbled forward with her momentum, her torso and arms splaying across the hood of the carriage. The unstable frame shuddered and shifted its position, splashing its side a foot down into the acid river below it.

Nathan had climbed down to a carriage just above the one Lorelei was trapped inside. He carefully stepped down onto the carriage’s back end, grabbing the frame above as it began to shift again. Lorelei was growling and crying in frustration and pain, trying fruitlessly to free her ankle. Nathan scrambled over the carriage’s roof and lowered himself onto the hood beside her. He sat down on the metal, anchoring his left foot on the opposite side of her trapped ankle, firmly gripping her calf with both of his hands, and slammed the heel of his right boot down into the metal hole.

As the beast neared them, panicked voices sounded behind them, and a gyrating orange light followed behind it. Lorelei bent forward, leaning on Nathan’s shoulders, as he continued his attempt to widen the hole her foot had fallen into, kicking her shin as much as the metal. The lizard suddenly lunged at them, slamming its fat front legs up onto the metal tube Lorelei had climbed up from. The carriage Nathan and Lorelei stood on lurched sideways, dipping further into the acid. Nathan began to slide, clutching Lorelei’s leg in a desperate attempt to keep from being thrown into the poisonous river. Lorelei took hold of his arm and yanked him towards her with all her strength.

Behind them, the dragon, seeming to sneer with its great gaping jaws, was winding back for another leap towards its victims. The crack of a whip suddenly echoed through the tunnel. The beast’s snout was struck with a snap of black leather, and it backed away, shaking its long head angrily. The dragon spun around to where Ojinna had climbed up on a thin ledge protruding from the stone wall on the left side of the tunnel. She swung her whip back and sent it sailing through the air towards the lizard’s head. As it struck, the leather rope wound around the beasts snout, locking it shut.

Nathan had steadied himself again, but the carriage he and Lorelei stood on had been knocked off its balance and continued to slowly sink into the pool of acid. As he yanked on her ankle to free it, her skin becoming slick with blood, his left foot dunked into the sludge below. A hiss rose up from the river.

“Nathan, your leg!” Lorelei suddenly cried out.

He shook his head, ignoring her and biting his lip from the burning pain that began to creep inside his boot. Lorelei’s leg finally wedged free and she tumbled forward, scrambling up onto the roof and turning the pull Nathan up behind her. Once they had climbed onto a stable carriage, Nathan paused, pushing Lorelei on ahead. He sat on a metal roof and kicked off the tatters of his left boot with his right, freeing his searing foot from the confines of his acid-soaked shoe. With his left foot now bear and burning, he climbed up the metal mountain after Lorelei.

The dragon, with its nose tangled in Ojinna’s whip, rocked its head violently backwards. The whip, with Ojinna latched onto the end of it, was yanked back, throwing Ojinna off of the ledge she stood on and launching her towards the beast to land on its head. She held fast to the whip with both hands, struggling to steady herself on the shaking, scaly surface of the beast’s head. Having thrown down the lantern onto one of the ancient carriage’s frames (after which, the lantern had tumbled inside to lay sideways on one of the carriage’s disintegrating fabric seats), Micah leapt towards the lizard. He jumped down on its rocking snout, clawing his way up its face, and jammed his dagger down into the dragon’s eye.

With a wild scream, the beast flailed back from the onslaught, throwing both Micah and Ojinna off of it. As they scrambled up onto the tangle of metal rising out of the river, Nathan and Lorelei ahead of them saw a flash of red speeding towards them, crawling over the metal like a crimson cat. Garret passed them and skidded to a halt a few yards from the bleeding and raging dragon.

“Go!” he yelled. “There’s a ledge on left side of the tunnel up ahead. I saw a door around the next bend. It might be a way out!”

Nathan and Lorelei nodded and hurried on ahead as he instructed with no argument. Garret slid down lower on the mountain, then stretched out his hands towards a carriage wedged just below him.

An explosion suddenly sounded as the carriage Micah had dropped the lantern into caught fire. Flames swept out from the machine in a squeal of shattering glass and groaning metal, igniting the tunnel in a wash of red dancing light.

Garret called down to Micah and Ojinna as they scrambled up the carriages. “Get away from the beast! I’ll take care of it. Keep moving and follow the Lady, I may have found a way out.”

Micah opened his mouth to protest, but before any sound came out, the metal carriage Garret was focused on suddenly shuddered and rose free from the wreckage. With that, Micah and Ojinna kept moving silently, approaching Garret and passing him to follow Lorelei and Nathan.

Sweat stood out on Garret’s forehead as his outstretched hands shook. Beyond them, the ancient carriage levitated into the air, unwieldy in its size. Garret concentrated hard, focusing all his strength into the carriage, and slowly at first, then faster, the machine went sailing through the air towards the dragon. Garret cried out in brute strength and rage as he flung his arms forward, slamming the carriage into the beast. The beast was thrown back, shrieking out in pain as its massive body was trapped beneath the vehicle.

Garret heaved a sigh, wiping the sweat from his brow, then turned and hurried after his companions.

Nathan and Lorelei had found the ledge quickly, glad to lower themselves onto steady ground again. Nathan was heavily limping on his left leg, Lorelei shuffling close to him, struggling to catch her breath and hanging her head. Ojinna and Micah caught up quickly, hurrying onto the ledge after them, followed last by Garret. They rounded the bend in the tunnel that Garret had spoken of and up ahead they could see an alcove in which sat the metal door.

Nathan hobbled to the door, gripped the handle, and pushed on it. When its old hinges refused to budge, Nathan tried again, jamming his shoulder against the metal. Micah skirted passed Ojinna and Lorelei to stand beside Nathan. The two nodded and made a third and final attempt to open the door. The two men threw their weight against the metal and the door finally flung back. Dim light trickled down over Micah and Nathan’s heads and they looked up the flight of stairs ahead of them to see the dark night sky above beaming with brilliant stars and a waning moon.

The band shuffled up the ancient crumbling steps, carefully navigating over the snow and ice that had drifted down them, inhaling deeply the fresh, crisp air. They reached the top of the stairs, filing out into the ruins of the great city of Nai Orka. The entire ruin was washed in a film of white snow, the jagged lines of crumbling and leveled buildings reflecting in a muted glow against the clear skyline. The same carriages that were stacked inside the underground tunnel were scattered about every street running between the buildings. The night air was still and the only sound that could be heard were the panting breaths of the five survivors of the underground.

Nathan took Lorelei’s hand in his and started forward. “We don’t have time to waste,” he said. “We need to find DeRuin.”

As Nathan limped, Ojinna glanced down at his bare foot marred with burns. She shook her head. “You can’t keep walking through the snow like that,” she scolded. “You’re hurt. Let me take a look at your foot.”

“I’m fine,” Nathan argued. “We keep moving.”

Ojinna approached him, frowning. “You’re not fine,” she insisted. “At least let me wrap that up so you’re not walking through the snow barefoot.”

Nathan was ready to argue further, but with one glance at Lorelei’s worried and concerned face, he knew this was an argument he wouldn’t win. What he didn’t want to do was waste any time, and that’s exactly what he was doing in trying to argue. So he conceded and sat down. Ojinna knelt before him, tending to his burns, and ripping cloth from his cloak to wrap up his foot. After a moment, through exhaustion, Nathan laid his back down on the snowy ground and stared up at the sky. His breath formed into crystallized fog as it rose from his mouth, expanding and obliterating in front of his vision. On the street to his right, he could see the line of ancient carriages and gluey black wheels out of the corner of his eye. There was one that was sideways in the line, its wheels up on the sidewalk that Nathan laid on. The front pane of glass was shattered and what look like the remains of a skeleton sprawled out from the broken glass. To his left, a looming building rose, an innumerable number of floors high. It was hard for him to imagine that once the building had been even taller, since its roof was broken and jagged as if some giant had taken hold of the top half and torn it right off. Hundreds of windows lined the building’s face, all shattered, and revealing black beyond them.

Snow crunched beside Nathan and Lorelei tumbled into his line of vision. She lowered herself to the ground, onto her stomach, lying beside him and peering at him with clouded green eyes.

“Lady!” Garret shrieked and hurried to her side, but she only silently shrugged and lifted her arm from the ground, waving him away in a tired motion.

Nathan sighed and reached out his hand towards her, letting his fingertips graze hers. “You shouldn’t lie in the snow like that,” he whispered.

The bleak expression on her face never moved. “It doesn’t matter now,” she replied.

Nathan shook his head, moving his hand to gently brush her cheek. “Don’t say that,” he said. “We’re so close now. We’ll find her. You’re going to make it.”

Lorelei didn’t respond. She just stared at him for a moment, then slowly let her eyes drift shut.

“Lori?” Nathan said, concerned. “Lori, are you alright?” He sat up and turned to her, unintentionally kicking Ojinna away as he moved to kneel by Lorelei’s side. “Lori? Stay with me!” He shook her limp body, then looked up to find his own terror mirrored on Garret’s face as he leaned over Lorelei from the other side. The two held onto the woman and gently rolled her over. Garret laid his head down on her chest while Nathan gripped her hand desperately. Garret held his breath, listening to the slow rhythm of her heartbeat, his head rising and falling with the shallow waves of her labored breath.

“She’s still alive,” Garret stated as he sat up.

Nathan nodded gravely, stood, and took the woman into his arms. “Then let’s get her to DeRuin,” he said.

Garret nodded, but remained crouched in the snow.

“Does anyone know where the hell we find DeRuin in this massive city?” Micah spoke up. He turned towards the ‘Sent, pulling Nathan and Ojinna’s gaze in that direction as well.

Garret frowned indignantly. “How should I know?” he scoffed. “All I was given was a name. Nathan’s the one who knew about the key in Cape Cove.” He nodded towards Ojinna and Micah. “You’re the ones who’ve been planning to break into Nai Orka to find DeRuin! If you know nothing of her whereabouts within the city, then I guess we just have to start looking, don’t we?”

Micah shook his head in frustration. “Our plan didn’t include a dying woman whose life depended on finding DeRuin,” he replied. “In our original plan, we had all the time we needed to search the city.”

“Look, this is pointless!” Nathan snapped. “Let’s just start moving. We won’t find DeRuin arguing about it.” He shifted the woman laying unconscious in his arms, her dead weight tugging on his bum shoulder—it was mostly healed by now, but would probably never be the same. He began to move down the street. Micah spoke again, halting Nathan’s progress, however, a soft, strange mechanical buzzing caught Garret’s attention and the boy whipped his head in the direction it had come from.

A few yards down the road, at the corner of an intersection, sat a low building whose roof stretching out further than its walls, creating a long overhang. Dangling from that overhang was a small black box. At the front of the box was a black circle of glass and beside the circle was a glowing red light, similar the green beacon that they had seen in the chamber that had taken them underground. It was just sitting there now that Garret had turned his head in that direction, silent. But he knew it must have been the source of the strange noise.

“Maybe we should split up then,” Micah said. Nathan stopped and turned around to face Micah impatiently. “We’d cover more ground and could find DeRuin faster that way.”

Ojinna shook her head in disagreement. “Yeah, and then what?” she cried. “How would we ever find each other again? It would take longer to regroup if any of us did find DeRuin. We should just stick together.”

Garret stood, oblivious of any conversation at this point, transfixed by the strange black box. Its black circle gleaming in the moon’s reflection reminded him of an eye. He began to walk closer. After a few steps it happened. The box moved sideways, buzzing as it went, the glass eye following his movement. He froze, the box ceasing as well and falling silent once more.

“What if Lorelei were to stay here?” Micah suggested. “We could each spread out and search in opposite directions. If any of us finds DeRuin, we could retrace our steps back here to Lorelei and bring her to DeRuin.”

“I’m not leaving Lori,” Nathan stated.

“Just give it up, Micah!” Ojinna cried. “Accept the fact that we have no plan for this! You can’t control this situation. We’re lost. We should stay together and start moving, like Nathan said.” She closed her mouth and turned as if she was done, but then she suddenly whipped back in Micah’s direction, jabbing a finger at him. “Unless you’re trying to get rid of us!” she accused. “Maybe you hope to find DeRuin on your own, squeeze Madden’s secrets out of her, then abandon us. You never believed in Elle to begin with. You never wanted to help her. You don’t care if she lives or dies. Maybe you want to punish us, punish me for what happened to your men.”

“My men died for this!” Micah yelled. “My men died for her!” He pointed towards Lorelei as she lay in Nathan’s arms. “This is all I have left, Jin, and I’m not going to let that woman die now! I’m not going to let my men’s lives be lost in vain! We will hunt DeRuin down and she will bring Lorelei back to life, or so help me, she’ll die trying!” Micah inhaled a breath and silence fell over the ruin.

Garret was still staring at he mysterious black box, ignoring his comrades. He began to walk again and the glass eye followed. The sense that he was being watched was strong and disquieting, but was it not also their only chance for hope? Someone or something was watching them at that very moment, and whoever, whatever it was, it would surely find them before they found it. And at least then, they would be found, for better or worse, they would no longer be lost.

Garret suddenly turned to Nathan. “We should go this way,” he said, pointing down the street in the direction of the black box with the black glass eye.

Nathan turned back towards Micah and Ojinna who were staring only at each other, then sighed and began to follow Garret down the road. After a moment, Micah and Ojinna conceded and followed as well.

For hours now they had walked through the ruined city. As they went, Nathan, Ojinna, and Micah each took turns of searching each building, each door, each dark alley that they passed, combing for signs of life. In many places, the snow was littered with tracks of birds and rodents, and some paw prints that suggested animals bigger than that: wild cats, wild dogs, kiyotes, maybe even bears. But no human footprints.

Garret did not search any buildings like the others, though. He just kept walking, frequently going on ahead of the others, refusing to slow his pace and forcing them to run after him to catch up. He moved as though in a trance, as though he was being guided by a higher power. What he was being guided by, however, was nothing so grand. He was simply following the black boxes that followed him with their black glass eyes. Beyond the first box he had spotted near the underground entrance, he had found another hanging at the corner of another intersection, and it, too, followed his every move. He just kept moving, following the trail of the black boxes scattered through the city.

It was nearly dawn when he finally halted his pace, standing in the middle of the sidewalk next to the line of Old Gen carriages on the street.

A strong wave of that strange feeling of being watched washed over him. This time, however, was different. This time, it was not the black boxes, though there was a black box hanging a few yards away with its eye pointed right at him.

“Garret?” Ojinna ventured.

He immediately shook his head and shushed her, listening intently. No, this time, there were actual eyes watching them. There had been movement behind him, feet shuffling through the snow. Garret suddenly spun to look behind him.

A dark, shrouded figure stood in the sidewalk beyond where his comrades stood. His comrades had been looking to Garret, but as he gazed at the figure, they slowly turned to follow his gaze.

The figure began to speak, its voice low and feminine and slurred with a strange guttural accent, the likes of which none of the rebels had ever heard, and had a difficult time following her words.

“You are not soldiers,” the woman said. Her ‘R’s purred in her mouth as they rolled off her tongue.

Nathan, Micah, and Ojinna were struck speechless in their surprise, but Garret moved forward. “No, we’re not,” he agreed.

“Then you are rebels,” the woman stated. She didn’t move and her face was cast in shadow from the large hood covering her head. “You should leave now before I call the soldiers from the post outside. Whatever you think I can give you, you are gravely mistaken. Just leave me be!”

“The soldiers at the post are dead,” Micah suddenly spoke up.

The woman’s head turned then, her hood snapping to face Micah. “Silly boy,” she purred. “There are always soldiers. If I call, Madden will always come. He is my prisoner, not the other way around.”

Garret swallowed, taking another step forward. “You are Llynette DeRuin, aren’t you?” he asked.

A hand suddenly emerged from the long sleeves of her cloak and rose to her hood, pulling it back. The face it revealed was small and perhaps once beautiful and deadly before it had become aged as it had now. Her pale, lined face was circled by thick gray locks flowing down past her shoulders. “And what if I am?” she challenged, sneering at the boy. “What is it you want from me, fire-child?”

Nathan suddenly started forward, crying out in relief. “You have to help her!” he said, holding Lorelei’s unconscious body up. “She’s dying! You have to save her!”

DeRuin stepped back, holding her hand up in protest. “Get away from me!” she shrieked. She shook her head viciously. “What do you think I am, a doctor? I am a scientist, not a healer! I care not about saving lives. Not hers. Not yours. Leave now, or I will have you all killed.”

“But she is Lorelei Roanaque!” Garret said. “She’ll be dead without your help. You’re our only hope.”

DeRuin paused then, eyeing the boy curiously, then glancing at the brunette in Nathan’s arms. Then she sighed bitterly. “Stupid boy,” she spat. “Roanaque is already dead. And that woman you carry could not be her. Number Thirteen had red hair from the day she was born. That woman is not her.” With that she turned to leave.

“You’re convinced over such a trivial thing as the color of her hair?” Garret cried. “Look at her hand! That’s the real proof. She bears the scar.”

DeRuin froze, then slowly turned back to face Garret. “If what you speak is untrue, fire-child,” she warned, “you will not live to take your next breath. I can have the soldiers here with just one press of a button, and none of you, including your comatose woman, will ever see the light of day.”

Garret responded with nothing but silence.

DeRuin walked quickly to where Nathan stood and clawed for Lorelei’s right hand, bringing it close to her face. DeRuin held the hand up close to her face, studying the pale circle drawn into the hand’s skin. DeRuin took her long, jagged thumbnail and dug it into Lorelei’s flesh where the scar lay, pressing savagely until blood sprung from below her nail.

“Hey!” Nathan yelled in outrage, pulling Lorelei back, but DeRuin held tight to her hand. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

“Quiet, imbecile,” she muttered. She pulled her nail out of the woman’s skin, satisfied in her experiment to ensure the “scar” was truly the mark that had been branded on Lorelei Roanaque. She was, however, surprised at the woman’s slow response to heal from the puncture DeRuin had afflicted to her hand.

“My Number Thirteen,” DeRuin whispered, fingering the mark on the brunette’s hand, “my most powerful creation. You are in trouble indeed.” DeRuin cast her eyes up at Nathan, seeming to look through him instead of looking at him. “Come, she has little time.”

“You’ll help her?” Nathan breathed.

But DeRuin had already turned and began walking away. Nathan hurried to follow, his three companions falling in line behind him.

DeRuin navigated quickly through the streets, never turning to look at the band following her. After several turns, she came to stop in front of a low building, whose roof appeared badly damaged and caving The front door was actually a handful of steps down from the sidewalk and beyond the cement steps were sliding glass doors with no handles. DeRuin stepped up to the side of the doors, producing from her cloak a small plastique card similar the Nai Orkan “key” that Ojinna had stolen from Captain Vizacech in Cape Cove. DeRuin held the card up close to a small back box, which held a another tiny green light, that flickered and beeped upon contact with the plastique card. The doors slid open and DeRuin stepped inside, the others following closely behind.

The room they stepped into was dark and sparse, scattered dust and rubble was strewn about the floor. DeRuin never hesitated. She continued on to the back of the room where a metal door stood, a bar striped horizontally across its middle. She pressed on the bar, emitting a squeal of scraping steel, and the door swung open. Beyond it were cement stairs. The group descended the stairs, which opened up into a landing, turned direction, then continued down. Finally they reached another door at the end of the staircase, which read in fading ancient letters from the Old Gen language “Basement”.

Upon entering the first room of the basement, Nathan and his comrades got the feeling that this was where DeRuin lived. While the room was still as bleak and sparse as the rest of the ruins they had passed through, it did have a fire pit built into one wall, which seemed to have been smothered out not long ago because the room was still warmer than the air in the rest of the building. There was a small mattress shoved into one corner and a few candles littering the floor, one of which DeRuin bent to light, casting the room in orange flickering light.

DeRuin nodded to another door at the other end of the room. “Bring her in there,” she instructed. She opened the door and stepped back, allowing Nathan to enter first, then slipped in behind him and slammed the door shut before anyone else could enter.

The room fell into impenetrable blackness the moment the door slammed shut, as there was no source of light and no windows. Nathan could hear DeRuin moving about the room, then a strange series of mechanical clicks and electric buzzing. Suddenly the room was illuminated in brilliant white light. Nathan looked up at the ceiling where eerie, ancient white bars buzzed and flickered as they glowed with a power beyond Nathan’s imagination.

“Set her down on the table,” DeRuin said. She nodded towards a metal platform that sat in the middle of the room. As Nathan glanced around, he was immediately disturbed by the array of tools and instruments and machines scattered over the counters lining the room’s walls. DeRuin sensed Nathan’s hesitance with annoyance and folded her arms. “Do you want me to save her or not?”

Nathan’s brow was creased with deep worry lines, but he nodded nonetheless and gently laid Lorelei down on the metal table.

“Now leave us,” DeRuin said.

Nathan gaped at her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

DeRuin suddenly bristled with impatience. She reached out and grabbed a metal stool that sat near her and flung it at Nathan. Nathan was stunned for a moment, flinching from the assault, and in his temporary moment of weakness through his surprise, the woman rushed at him, throwing the door open and shoving him outside. He stumbled to regain his footing once outside the room and spun to fight back, but DeRuin had already slammed shut and locked the door.

Nathan growled in outrage, throwing his body against the door and pounding his fists painfully against the metal.

“Hey!” he screamed. “Let me in! I swear if you hurt her, I will kill you! I will make you suffer!”

DeRuin ignored the man’s cries and turned back to the dying woman lying on the metal table in the middle of her lab. She peered down at the woman’s flawlessly beautiful face that looked years younger than she actually was, and perhaps would look even younger still were her eyes not so dark and swollen shut.

“Finally, my Number Thirteen returns to me,” DeRuin spoke softly, reverently. She reached down and took the woman’s right hand in her own, stroking the pale “scar” it bore. “He has tried to keep me from you for many years . . . but perhaps . . . perhaps you are indeed stronger than he is. He has feared you since you were born, and for good reason. The things I could do with you . . . our reunion could change history. We will change the world as Madden knows it. Of this I am sure.”

With that she picked up a scalpel from a tray on a nearby counter and a glass jar. DeRuin held Lorelei’s arm up and jammed the blade into her wrist, dragging it down to her elbow, slicing her forearm open. DeRuin held the jar beneath the brunette’s arm, letting her dark blood pool into it.

The blood didn’t stop. It continued to flow, spilling out over Llynette DeRuin’s hands, onto the metal table, dripping down onto the floor. DeRuin puzzled over it, watching it pour out of the woman lying on the table, sickness and death oozing out of her. DeRuin set the jar of Lorelei Roanaque’s tainted blood onto the table beside her frail body and stared into the swirling darkness of the liquid.

“Oh yes,” DeRuin whispered. “Madden’s empire will crack. And your blood, Thirteen, will be the key.”

A/N: This is the end of Part II. Borne out of Ash is the third and FINAL part of ReGeneration. In Part III, all will be revealed: dark secrets, old grudges, new rivalries, fated love, desire, hatred, truth, faith and the final battle between the True Phoenix and the False Idol.

Thanks to all who have reviewed thus far. If you are reading, I can’t stress enough how helpful it is to me if you review. Part III is the only piece of ReGeneration that is, to date, unfinished. There is so much more of the story that needs to be written, but I know I can finish this story with some help and support from reviewers!

JR