“Chris,” said Luke.
He didn’t really have anything to follow this up with, but he felt better saying it. It reminded him that, despite everything, they were still alive, still together. It came as a slight surprise to him that he found this comforting.
They walked wordlessly down the hellish tunnel, past reaching arms and headless torsos, past scenes of war and pestilence, following the path into the heart of the world.
“Is it just me, or is it getting hotter?” said Luke, loosening his woollen coat. “Exactly how far down is the molten core of the Earth?”
“Far deeper than this,” said Chris, her gaze still fixed ahead.
Chris’s thoughts kept returning to scarlet eyes, full of urgent anguish and regret, as though trying to reach someone far away. No one should die alone in distant lands, away from loved ones, without hope, without peace, without closure. No one should be left behind, their final fleeting thoughts turning towards all the things they wished they’d done differently, wondering why, in the end, they were alone.
Chris found her steps automatically slowing, and as she emerged reluctantly from catatonic mode, she saw that the passageway came to an end at a blank wall. There was, however, a narrow stone staircase circling downwards.
“That looks like a good place for an ambush,” said Luke.
Chris stood at the edge of the stairwell, a dim red glow filtering up over spiralling steps.
“So it does,” said Chris, as she began to descend.
Luke followed closely behind, eyes warily probing the darkness below. The steady rumbling which had followed them for the past few hours was now joined by a new sound, like a distant, dull roar, growing louder as they continued downwards. Luke decided there was probably no point in trying to guess what it was, since he doubted there was anything they could do about it unless it happened to be a flock of killer crows who wanted a Hacky Sack.
The staircase finally ended, and Chris and Luke stepped onto packed earth the colour of old rust. They stood in a long, grand hall, flanked by tall pillars carved from caramel sandstone. The pillars were engraved with magnificent, swirling designs resembling stylised wings, clouds, and tongues of flame. More impressive, however, were the small jets of orange-blue fire illuminating the room, blazing from short metal pipes protruding from the walls. The pipes lined the walls like torches, cupped in ornate iron brackets. The roaring hiss of the flames reminded Chris of the noise made by a welding torch.
At the far end of the hall, a set of narrow, arched double doors stretched towards the ceiling. The doors had been cut from pomegranate marble, veined in smoky white, and the surface had been left rough and unpolished. Engraved in each door was a tongue of tall flame, flickering in the dull firelight.
“We’re going to have such interesting travel photos,” said Luke.
The shadows in the hall shifted like liquid, and it took them a moment to notice the crumpled figure lying near a side wall. Chris’s heart seemed to stop, and she had a sudden sensation of falling, like when you saw the beginning of an accident you couldn’t stop, and you knew you couldn’t bear what was going to happen next.
Chris took a step forward.
“Chris—” Luke grabbed her arm.
The figure suddenly shifted, struggling to rise to its knees. It looked up, almost unrecognisable. Emir’s face was matted with blood, both trickling from a scrape on his forehead and running from his nose and a split lip.
“Go!” said Emir, his voice raspy.
“Where am—” began Chris.
“Chris!” Luke pulled on Chris’s arm as a shadow solidified behind Emir, one gun aimed at Emir, the other at Chris and Luke.
“Stay right there,” said Docker, eyes glowing dully.
Flames rippled along the walls, and the air stirred like a heatwave blowing in from the desert. Chris and Luke stood side by side, glaring across the hall at Docker. Shadows washed around the room, and it briefly occurred to Chris that the soft lighting would be quite flattering if everyone wasn’t sweating like a cheese in a microwave.
“So, we meet again,” said Chris.
“I’m going to make this very easy for you,” said Docker. “You’re a scientist, of sorts, so you know what your options are. If you choose not to co-operate, you, your priest friend, and Emir will all be dead within the next twenty seconds. Or you can do exactly as I say, without question, without hesitation. Those are your only two choices. What’ll it be?”
“Chris, don’t—” Emir called.
Without warning, a shot rang through the hall, and Emir stared at Docker in shock. Chris gasped and saw Emir turn towards her in alarm, realising that it wasn’t the barrel aimed at him that was smoking. Chris turned to Luke, who was staring ahead, perfectly still and wide eyed—whether from anger or shock, it was hard to tell. She watched as a thin hairline of bright red slowly crawled across his cheekbone, and a single drop of blood swelled at the edge of the cut.
“I’m a very good shot,” said Docker.
There was an almost audible ticking as Chris, Luke and Emir quickly calculated their chances of overpowering Docker before he killed them all. Docker, perfectly calm and composed, had clearly already performed these calculations. Chris’s thoughts spun like moths in a whirlwind, and she forced herself to focus on the evidence before her. Heroics were well and good if you were the heroic type, but too many people had died today. There were only so many things you could scrape off your lab coat before you just couldn’t put on that coat anymore.
“What do you want?” Chris’s voice was flat.
Docker shifted his position slightly, keeping Chris and Luke in gunsight.
“Open the doors,” said Docker.
Exchanging a look of apprehension, Chris and Luke walked slowly towards the far end of the hall. Carved pillars loomed on either side, depicting rivers and skies of fire.
“I hope you figured out the flaming sword,” whispered Chris.
“I solved the last one,” muttered Luke.
But I’m the one who took one for the team. Burning flesh?”
“I just took a bullet,” replied Luke.
“I’ve seen paper-cuts worse than that,” said Chris, hoping that Luke couldn’t hear the shake in her voice.
The marble doors soon rose before them like a red monolith, and Chris touched the rough surface tentatively. It felt warm against her skin. Unpleasantly warm.
“In primary school, firefighters talked about doors like this,” whispered Chris.
Luke’s gaze traced the stylised banner of flame on each door.
“Man must show humility,” muttered Luke. “Accept his own weakness, accept the teachings of the Lord…”
“That sounds like rolling—”
“None of it sounds remotely like rolling,” snapped Luke. “Can you even do a forward roll, let alone acro—”
There was a sudden bang, and Chris slammed into the doors with a startled grunt. She stared at the graze on her right shoulder, clamping her hand over the wound as blood started to seep into her shirt. She glared at Docker, a wisp of smoke trailing from his raised gun.
“I’m not going to keep prompting you,” said Docker.
“Maybe we can make him waste all his bullets,” whispered Chris.
“I can still hear you,” said Docker.
Chris turned to see Luke pushing against the double doors, his palms flat against the rough marble, head down as his feet braced against the dirt floor. Chris pressed her good arm against the door, her feet scraping troughs in the dirt. The doors resisted, and she could feel the pressure of something pushing back from the other side.
Don’t let it be something gross
, thought Chris.
With a growl of effort, Chris and Luke slowly pushed the marble doors open a crack, and a brilliant glow of orange light broke through. The marble doors suddenly drew open with a hollow, sucking noise, leaving Chris and Luke standing off-balance in the glowing doorway.
“Down! Down!” Chris screamed, grabbing Luke and throwing them both to one side.
The sucking noise continued for only a second more before there was a moment of eerie silence, followed by a thundering roar. A fireball erupted from the arched doorway, rolling out into the hall like an incendiary burp. As the tongue of fire lashed out over Chris and Luke, Docker stepped briskly behind a nearby pillar while Emir curled up, covering his head with his arms. An intense, scorching heat filled the room, and Chris could smell singed hair.
As she started to wonder how long it would take for human flesh to bake, the roar began to fade. The tails of flame retreated through the marble archway, and after a moment Luke raised his head warily.
“Do you think that was the flaming sword?” asked Chris. “Because that was almost rolling.”
“Actually,” said Luke, staring through the archway. “I think
those
are the flaming
swords.”
Chris looked through the darkly swirling doorway, the air distorted by a rippling haze of heat. She could make out fluid, moving shapes, blurry tangles of orange, blue, and grey. As her eyes followed the movement, she could discern patterns and arcs, the nebulous shapes finally resolving into distinct objects.
Inside the chamber, some kind of machinery covered the walls, bristling with large metal pipes belching long jets of flame. Massive whips of fire swirled like the trails of competitive ribbon dancers. The pipes were set on complicated metal contraptions reminiscent of massive wagon wheels. The wheels and mechanisms rotated in erratic patterns, sending spinning tongues of flame lashing through the room. If the chamber had a far side, it was obscured by curtains of fire.
“There must be an enormous deposit of natural gas nearby,” said Chris in awe. “They’ve harnessed it to drip-feed like some kind of fountain of fire.”
Luke felt something inside him sink just slightly. He shouldn’t have been surprised, really. It wasn’t as though he had really expected the doors to swing open, revealing the Archangel Gabriel sitting at a card table playing solitaire, his sword of flame propped up in an umbrella stand. Still, any man who hoped for an angel and got gas was bound to be disappointed.
“Come back. Slowly,” commanded Docker, his gaze quickly taking in the blazing room.
Chris and Luke walked back towards Docker. As they approached, his expression remained calm and unreadable. He would have made a killer poker player, probably quite literally.
“Stop there,” said Docker.
Docker flicked his gaze towards Luke.
“You. Turn around, hands behind your back,” said Docker, keeping one gun trained squarely on Chris.
Luke glanced at the gun, then reluctantly turned around. As he stiffly held his hands behind him, his expression could have put someone in cryostasis. In a series of precise, rapid movements, Docker kicked a loop of rope from the floor, holstered his gun and caught the rope in one hand, while keeping his other gun locked on Chris. In a smooth, one-handed motion, Docker folded a complicated knot tightly around Luke’s wrists, doing things with his fingers and teeth that Chris couldn’t do with both hands and an assistant.
“Now sit over there, facing the wall,” said Docker, pulling out his second gun and training it on Emir.
As Luke sat down awkwardly, Chris was filled with a brittle tension, suddenly aware of their vulnerability. Three shots were all it would take, and no one would ever know what had happened to them.
Chris looked over at Docker, his demeanour a model of control and precision. Nothing trembled, nothing fluttered with anxiety or excitement, nothing shone with fear or hope. Meanwhile, Chris felt as though her skin were about to split open like a chrysalis from all the thoughts and feeling writhing inside.
Docker caught her gaze, and held it.
…eyes shining under star-spattered skies…
“Emir, be so good as to give the lady your fire hazard gear,” he ordered, keeping one gun on Chris and the other on Emir.
Emir struggled to sit up, and Chris twitched to move.
“Don’t help him,” said Docker.
Emir could feel himself shaking with frustration, with anger, with pain. It roiled inside him so viciously he could hardly breathe. He felt trapped in this place, in this body—he needed open skies, he needed to breathe, he needed to run. He wished he’d never taken this job. He wished he’d stayed at uni. He wished so hard for so many things he could scream his soul into bloody shreds.
Instead, he forced his hands to unzip his fitted commando jumpsuit, releasing clasps and unbuckling straps, peeling off the tough black suit. Underneath, Emir wore only plain trousers and a black zip-up jumper—civilian clothes, with no particular protective qualities aside from defence against draughts. For some reason, it felt oddly liberating to be free of all the equipment and assorted gear.
“Leave it on the ground,” ordered Docker. “Now turn around, hands behind your back.”
Emir stood up slowly, keeping his eyes on both guns. He knew Docker had no patience for bluffing or chatter at the best of times, let alone at such a critical stage of the mission. Although he had never seen Docker kill someone, he had no reservations that he was coldly capable of such a thing. From the very start of the mission, Docker had been a little peculiar. He’d been a little cooler, a little less talkative, a little grimmer—as though there were something different this time. Like he had something to prove.
Emir wasn’t sure what it was, but he knew that Docker wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him if Emir gave him a reason. Which would leave Chris and Luke to face Docker alone. Emir forced himself to remain still as his wrists were bound tightly behind him.
“Sit down next to the priest,”
Emir walked smoothly to the wall and sat down beside Luke, his heart pounding in his throat. He glanced at Luke, who gave him a somewhat shirty look.
Docker turned to Chris, one gun still aimed across the room at Emir and Luke.
“Put on the suit,” said Docker.
Chris had the uneasy feeling she knew where this was heading, and tried to stay focused as she locked clips and secured seals. With some fumbling, she managed to slide into Emir’s commando outfit, which was a little too big for her in places, and surprisingly, a little too tight in others. The fabric was still warm, and smelled faintly of sweat and expensive aftershave.