“True,” Daniel replied. “Grant leveled the place. But as I recall, the facility itself was a tall, pristine building standing in the middle of a large cavern. The cavern could conceivably still be standing even if the building is not. And if that’s the case . . .”
“ . . . then maybe we could sift through the rubble,” Lisa finished, frowning with understanding. “Wonderful. I hate it.”
Daniel offered her his best brave smile and threw an arm around her shoulder. It was such an easy gesture, so natural feeling, he couldn’t imagine why he’d fought it for so long. “Someone has to do it. Who else is there?”
She didn’t respond, just settled into his arm, covering his hand on her shoulder with her own. After a few silent minutes, she gazed up at the Pod’s curved metal ceiling. “I wonder what’s happening out there,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
The Pod began to slow, and the display screen at the front of the Pod indicated they were coming up on their stop. As he helped her to her feet, he decided not to tell her that her question was the same one that had consumed his thoughts for the duration of the ride.
The Pod opened to a subterranean platform halfway up the side of the enormous round tunnel. They stepped out onto a silver metallic grate. A small archway in the side of the tunnel waited, and seeing no other options, Daniel took her hand and led her through it.
The opening brought them to a small, round tunnel. It was a gloomy place with illumination coming only from either end of the tunnel. It was longer than Daniel felt comfortable entering, but the light at the other end kept them moving forward. The tunnel angled upward a good twenty degrees, meaning the Conveyor system was deeper underground than whatever they were moving toward.
“This is so weird,” Lisa commented, shaking her head.
“Which part?”
“
All
the parts,” she replied, getting wound up again. “The whole world is slowly turning into some kind of nightmare, people just won’t stop trying to kill us, three of our friends are dead, the rest are under the thrall of the thing living inside the skin of one of our dead friends, Ethan’s gone off to get himself killed in the mother of all apocalyptic battles, and I don’t even know what the two of us are doing down here . . .”
Daniel squeezed her hand. “We’re here looking for the broken fragments of the—”
“
I know that!
But what makes us think this is going to help our lives become any less crazy? We’re down here on the whim of some post-pubescent who
thinks
he
may
have heard something or other about the Secretum
possibly
being frightened of the Dominion Stone! It could be the biggest rabbit trail in the history of rabbit trails.”
“Or it could be the key to stopping an unstoppable man . . .” Daniel reminded her as they neared the end of the tunnel, “or
whatever
Oblivion is.”
The tunnel emptied into the mouth of the large cavern, but it was nothing like Daniel remembered it from his last visit. Twisted and destroyed, the once-immaculate research facility was nothing but ruined wreckage now, having crashed completely to the ground and spread its rubble throughout the space. Much of the cavern’s high ceiling overhead had come crashing down as well, depositing tons of boulders and rocks on top of the decimated building. As a result, what remained above them was a craggy mess of cracked stones and sod that looked as though any piece of it could break free with the slightest provocation. It wasn’t as big as the cavern containing the underground city, from the way Ethan described it. But it was breathtaking nonetheless.
“Oh, well okay, then,” Lisa quipped. “We got this. Piece of cake.”
Daniel wanted to admonish her, but what would be the point? The landscape before them was bleak, offering virtually no hope of success. It was also eerily silent.
On the far side of the cavern, Daniel could see the elevator access he remembered using when following Grant and Alex down here months ago, along with the Loci. They were standing directly opposite from it, entering the underground space from an entrance that was blocked to their vision the last time they were here.
“Well, we may as well give the sifting a try,” Daniel said hopefully, scratching an itch on the back of his hand.
Lisa rolled her eyes in an exaggerated kind of way, but she followed him loyally as he moved into the cavern proper. They waded carefully over some of the smallest bits of rubble on the outskirts of the destroyed building. Daniel’s eyes scoured the ground beneath his feet for any sign of the telltale brown stone, while Lisa couldn’t stop staring timidly upward, as if waiting for one of the loose rocks or clumps of earth high above to smash her into a lump on the ground.
“I don’t know how you do it,” she said softly.
“What’s that?” he asked absentmindedly.
“Keep going,” she said, and he glanced at her before returning to his ground search. “Everything that life keeps throwing at you—you never stop. You keep searching for your scientific proof, your answers to whatever puzzle you’re facing right now. I’ve never known anyone so focused, capable of being so single-minded . . . come what may. Of course, none of this is counting that two-month period where you hid in your office out of guilt and refused to talk to anybody.”
He glanced at her again, not quite smirking. “I guess I just don’t know how to do anything else,” he replied. “I always keep going, I always have. Didn’t I tell you about how I was always getting into dangerous situations as a kid?”
Lisa had stopped searching and was now held in rapt attention. She loved it whenever he divulged secrets from his past, because he so rarely did it. “All that stuff about how you used to stick your fingers into electrical sockets as a toddler and stuff?”
He nodded, smiling sheepishly with the memory. “My mom used to say that she believed there was a reason I was pulled from death’s clutches so many times. She actually told me one time that I must have some kind of important role to play when I grew up, and that’s why God continually spared my life. If you can believe that.”
Lisa didn’t hesitate. “Of course I believe it. She was totally right! Look what you did for Grant and all his friends. Look at what you’ve done for me . . .”
Daniel chuckled. “What, get you into more trouble than you ever wanted or needed?”
“No, silly man,” she said, sidling over to him, and before he knew what was happening, she had clutched his hand in hers, soft but confident. He turned at her touch and she was right there, her face just inches from his.
Her eyes were searching his, hungry. Funny how he had never noticed before just how red and full her lips were. So, so tempting . . . How could he have missed something that prominent in her features? In all the time he had known her, how had he not noticed her perfectly spaced and proportioned brown eyes, her pink cheeks with just a hint of down-home freckles, her flattering bone structure— Daniel’s line of thought was interrupted when her lips pressed into his, and if time hadn’t already stopped, he would have sworn that it had been bottled just now, just for the two of them, wrapped inside this perfect moment . . .
He was startled out of the kiss and pulled away from her suddenly. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.
She was grinning from ear to ear, giddy. “All I heard was my pulse racing past my ears.”
“It sounded like hammering, or maybe some kind of crash—”
He heard it again, and this time Lisa’s eyes grew at the sound too. It sounded as if someone had picked up a bunch of debris off the ground and tossed it out of their way. They both searched for the direction the sound had come from.
“What was that?” Lisa whispered.
“Someone beat us here.”
Ethan couldn’t believe it. His eyes were showing him a vision that couldn’t be real. It was impossible.
But the world was now a place where the inconceivable had become reality.
Flat on his stomach at the top of a hill over three miles to the south of the battlefield, Ethan surveyed what was left of the site. Oblivion and his army had marched through the region and leveled everything in their path, in what Ethan felt had been only a moment.
Weak from running so far and carrying a grown man over his shoulder, Ethan could not keep going. Lying down on the ground seemed like a perfectly rational option. Adrenaline would take him no further. He had actually managed to doze off for a few minutes after collapsing on the ground, but the unconsciousness brought no real restoration, and soon he was awake again.
After unlocking his cuffs, he’d rolled over onto his stomach to take a look at the destruction Oblivion had wrought. From what he could tell from this distance, there seemed to be little if anything left of the coalition forces. Every tank, every weapon, every human being—it was all gone, swept clean by Oblivion’s upturning of the ground as he marched. Even the fighter jets and bombers had crashed to the ground, mostly plucked from the sky by Oblivion’s immense power.
Sorrow flooded into him at the reality and magnitude of the loss of life. This was no longer a battleground; Oblivion had transformed it into a mass graveyard. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers—possibly up to a million brave men and women— all dead. He’d tried to warn them. He knew he’d done everything he could.
He could only feel pity for Director Stevens and General Davies and their ilk. They’d brought this on themselves and all of the men and women under their command. True, Oblivion would have tracked them all down and killed them off eventually anyway, just like the rest of the human race, but they’d basically offered up a not small percentage of humanity to him, allowing him to kill so very many all at once. The fools.
This train of thought was stalled when he heard faint grunting sounds to his immediate right. Sergeant Paul Tucker was stirring awake at last, having passed out not long after Ethan slung him over his shoulder.
“What?” he slurred, opening his eyes. Back to the ground, Tucker startled himself awake, jerking back to reality.
“Where . . . ?”
“Relax,” Ethan said, pushing himself up onto one elbow, “the battle’s long over, Sergeant.” Ethan gestured with his head in the direction of the battlefield.
Tucker pushed himself up slowly, painfully until he was on his knees. Ethan was pleased to see the residual effects of Hector’s pain attack seemed to have been only temporary. The effects of what his eyes were absorbing right now would last a lifetime.
Tucker tried to mouth a question, starting with the word
how,
but no sound came out. He merely stared, eyes wide open, unable to speak.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said. “They’re gone.”
“My men . . .” Tucker whispered, his demeanor unchanged. Tucker took a deep breath, his features still in shock from the devastation spread out in front of him, the loss of life.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said again.
The sergeant began getting to his feet. “Survivors . . .”
With great effort, Ethan stood to block the other man’s path. “Oblivion wouldn’t have left any.”
Ethan’s jaw cracked when Tucker sucker-punched him, and Ethan staggered backward until he partially fell to the ground, bracing himself with one arm. Tucker moved forward, blood in his eyes. “You dragged me away from the battle—from my men! And now they’re dead! They are good men, loyal soldiers, hardworking . . . They deserved better than . . . And I wasn’t even
with
them . . . !”
Ethan wiped the blood from his lips. “There’s nothing you could have done. And I mean
nothing
.”
“I should have been with them . . .” Tucker muttered, looking far off to the plains, a stricken look on his face. “Command . . . I have to report in, the Army has to know!”
Again, Ethan took up position in front of Tucker, but this time he was ready to duck. He’d let the soldier have his moment, but the longer they stayed here, the more people Oblivion would kill.
“Sergeant,” Ethan said slowly, bracingly. “You really think there
is
an Army anymore?”
Tucker’s arms fell to his sides, his shoulders and head going limp. He closed his eyes.
After a long moment of silence, with his eyes still closed, he asked, “What’s happening? What
is
Oblivion? What’s all this about?”
“The human race is being eradicated,” Ethan explained, massaging his jaw again. “Utterly and without mercy. You want to help stop it, then help
me
. Now.”
Tucker opened his eyes and raised his head, flashing Ethan an angry look. “I never asked you to drag me away from the battle! I’m a deserter!”
Ethan struggled to maintain his patience, trying to see the situation from the other man’s shoes, but able to think only of Oblivion’s rampage. “First—you didn’t desert anything. Second—I didn’t drag you, I
carried
you. Unconscious, over my shoulder. And third, there may be a way to end all of this, but I have to get back to my friends and help them. You want to stay here and mourn the dead, be my guest. I’m going to try and help the living ensure that
this
doesn’t happen again.”
“Who
are
you?” Tucker asked.
“I’m one of the good guys,” Ethan replied. “So are you. We’re fighting the same enemy. But guns aren’t the way to do it. There’s still a chance to save everyone who’s still alive on this planet, but we could use all the help we can get.”
Tucker seemed to consider this. “Why should I believe you?” he asked. “You were in handcuffs the last time I saw you.”
Ethan sighed, his mind racing, trying to think of a way to break through the walls between them. “You have any family back home, Sergeant?”
Tucker’s eyebrows knotted together as he looked Ethan up and down. “I have a son. He’s with his grandparents right now, but he lives with me on the base. Fort Bragg.”
“All right then,” Ethan replied. “Do you want to go back to your son and watch him become the next dead body in Oblivion’s wake? Or do you want to give your son, and the rest of the world, a fighting chance?”
Tucker looked down. His head rose to survey the dead battlefield once more, his eyes moving slowly across the miles of mountainous plains set out beneath them. Ethan found it nearly impossible to read the weathered soldier’s expressions.