Shadowmark (The Shadowmark Trilogy Book 1) Page 4

  Mina’s gate changed. She walked to another terminal. Then her flight was delayed. Then her gate changed again—reassigned to the original one. Mina walked back. Her flight changed three more times. So did her gate. By the time she boarded the plane, her good mood had long ago evaporated, and the atmosphere aboard the plane did nothing to improve her state of mind.

  Passengers jostled one another down the cramped aisles, arguing about seating arrangements and overhead storage. A greying businessman, shirttail untucked under his suit jacket and silk tie draped over his collar, complained loudly to a flight attendant about being bumped from first class. She sighed and urged him to sit down in his assigned seat. The remainder of the crew hurried up and down the aisles, pushing past one another as they resolved seating conflicts and helped passengers stow their baggage.

  In coach, the Boeing sat ten seats across in a three-four-three arrangement. Both aisles were jammed with people. Mina squeezed past the irate businessman and took her seat next to the window in the left section, two rows behind the emergency exit. She was glad to have a window seat, at least. She plugged in her phone immediately and pressed the power button, hoping to text Lincoln before the plane departed.

  “Ladies and gents, this is your captain speaking. I need everyone to find their seats as quickly as possible. This weather isn’t giving us much of a window. I’m afraid if I can’t take off in the next ten minutes, we’ll be here another ten hours.”

  Two men took their seats on Mina’s right. Seatbelts clicked all around. Mina’s phone finally turned on, hostilely declaring No Service. Mina mashed down the power button with a sigh.

  The final snap of overheads. Every seat had been filled. The preflight safety video began, and the plane began to roll forward before it finished. The captain skipped the usual speech welcoming everyone aboard. Lightning flashed outside the windows, rain streaming as the plane taxied down the runway. The plane shook for several minutes after takeoff and finally climbed above the turbulence. When the shaking subsided, a smattering of applause went around the cabin.

  Mina looked out to say a silent goodbye to London, but dense storm clouds hid the city from view. Instead she scanned the grey clouds, biting down on the inside of her mouth. Lightning streaked across the sky, looking like white fingers that reached out for the plane. Mina thought of the news programs that suggested the towers were alien. She shuddered. Maybe something was lurking out there, waiting for the plane to become airborne before blasting it out of the sky. She turned her attention back to the cabin.

  Across the aisle, a family of four with two pre-teen children was already watching movies on their phones. Mina was sure she recognized the family as one that had held a charging station hostage in the airport.

  “American?” asked her neighbor in an obvious Yankee accent. He was well groomed and well dressed, probably around Mina’s age.

  “Yes,” Mina said.

  He jerked his head in the family’s direction. “They hogged a charging station for a full twenty-four hours. How long does it take to charge a phone?”

  Mina didn’t respond, her thoughts already skipping ahead to their arrival in Atlanta.

  “Any idea what the towers are for?” the man continued.

  “Nothing that hasn’t already been suggested.”

  “Me either.” He sat up and looked at her. “But I do have a really bad pun. Want to hear it?”

  Mina smiled despite herself. “Yes,” she said.

  “You know those programs on that local London station that claimed the towers were extraterrestrial instead of terrorist? Well, I have a better theory. They are—wait for it—extra-terrorist-rials.” He snickered.

  Mina laughed. “That’s awful.”

  “And yet you’re laughing.”

  Mina shook her head, still smiling. “Better to laugh than cry.” She paused. “I’m Mina.”

  “Matt.”

  They chatted a few minutes before Mina remembered she could use her phone again. She pulled it out to check her email. When she opened the browser, the in-flight network’s login screen welcomed her. Mina entered the requisite information and pressed her thumb to the fingerprint scanner. Nothing happened. She tried again. The screen turned white, then bumped her back to the login page. After trying two more times, Mina pressed her call button for a flight attendant, and a petite woman with bleary eyes appeared.

  “I can’t log in to the in-flight network. Is there anything you can do?”

  “I’m sorry. Service is down.”

  The flight attendant left to check on another passenger. Wishing she could talk to Lincoln, Mina fidgeted with her phone a moment more before putting it away and settling into her seat.

  Passengers and crew also settled into a sort of disjointed quiet. The captain turned off the cabin lights, but few people slept. Matt turned out to be easy company, and he and Mina talked quietly for a while until he dozed next to her, his head lolling back on the tiny airplane pillow. When the skies cleared, Mina looked out her window again into darkness. Then she leaned back against the headrest and allowed the steady hum of the engines to coax her into her own fitful sleep.

  DAY 4

  MINA WOKE TO THE SOUND of the intercom. The cabin lights flickered on.

  “ … about two hours out from Atlanta,” the captain was saying. “Unfortunately, we are diverting the flight to Charlotte, North Carolina instead. I realize this will inconvenience many of you, but we we’ll do everything we can to secure your transportation to Atlanta once we land. Please remain seated for the remainder of the flight.”

  A fleeting silence fell over the cabin as everyone on board considered the change and the possibly unpleasant reasons for it. Then everyone began to talk at once. How were they going to make their connections? How were they going to get home? A few hollered for an explanation. A child cried from the front of the plane, upset by the increasing noise.

  Mina wondered about Lincoln, and the burden of the unknown descended on her. Thirty-five thousand feet in the air, she felt safely detached from the turmoil below. But as the plane descended, her stomach tightened, as if a string were tugging it up through her throat. She pulled out a book, but she reread the same line four times before giving up and closing it. To distract herself, she tried watching the other passengers, but their growing unease only added to her own anxiety. Even Matt had busied himself with knotting and unknotting the strings of his hoodie. Mina did not try to engage him in conversation.

  Instead she spent the last minutes of the flight watching the lights below. To the east, faint yellow rays lit the sky. On the edge of the city, white searchlights glared on an obsidian wall of stone. Passengers and crew craned their necks for a glimpse of the tower, pointing out the windows and nudging their neighbors. In the predawn grey, the searchlights cast a ghostly aura over the structure, creating the illusion of a rock wall connecting the ground to the heavens above. The plane turned before beginning its final descent, and the tower dropped out of sight.

  Once the plane landed, Mina texted Lincoln. The networks were busy, and she sent the message three times before her phone marked it as delivered. He didn’t text back. Mina put on her coat and gathered her tote bag, leaning forward in anticipation as the plane slowly taxied toward its gate.

  “Well, Mina, good luck,” said Matt. He smiled. “Maybe I’ll see you in Atlanta.”

  “Yeah,” said Mina, smiling. “Maybe.”

  Planes crowded the apron, narrowly avoiding collisions. A small jetliner swerved away from Mina’s plane, its wing sliding beneath the larger Boeing. At last the terminal came into view, a welcoming sight in the morning sunshine. Passengers shifted around, gathering their belongings. As the plane moved toward the gate, Mina checked her messages again. No text. She was in the middle of checking her email when her phone died unexpectedly.

  Thinking it had frozen, Mina fiddled with the power button a moment before realizing the cabin lights had turned off and the sound of the engines had faded. The plane roll
ed to a stop on the tarmac, the gate in sight. One by one, passengers murmured as they became aware of the outage.

  Mina looked around for a flight attendant, surprised no announcement had been made. As she reached for her seatbelt, the plane vibrated slightly. Then the vibrating became a violent shaking. A screeching sound sliced through the air. Screams and shouts erupted, and the plane shook with such force that Mina bit her tongue. Blood filled her mouth.

  The shaking stopped. The gate shifted from view as the Boeing turned directly toward the terminal. Matt unfastened his seatbelt and scrambled to his feet. Then the cabin lurched, and he fell over the man in the outside seat and into the aisle.

  More people stood, including the man Matt had tripped over. The plane jerked again. As if they were all riding in some massive, slow-moving simulator, the cabin tilted to the right. The ground rose up on the opposite side of the plane and blue sky filled Mina’s window. Bodies catapulted over seats and into aisles. There was a ripping sound as the plane convulsed. To Mina’s right, the cabin glowed brilliant orange.

  The explosion flung Mina into the wall, and her head split with pain.

  Water dripped from a crack in the concrete ceiling and splashed into a large puddle at Lincoln’s feet. He pulled out his phone and turned on the video camera, pointing it at the tunnel ahead. “I suspect if they find this video, they’ll confiscate it,” he said, “but I want personal documentation of this place. I’m in West Virginia, won’t say where, but I’m underneath an abandoned coal mine. We just arrived this morning.

  “The colonel is putting together a team to come in here. The mine entrance was a lot more dilapidated than we thought it would be, so he’s taking more time. Now that I’ve slept some, I’m more than a little curious about this place no one seems to know anything about.” He probably wasn’t being too smart about exploring a decrepit mineshaft by himself, but he was eager to be doing something. He hated waiting.

  Lincoln shone his small flashlight and camera on the other side of the water. The puddle stretched across the passageway and ran along the edges of the cinderblock walls. From there, it trickled into a crack near the stairs that led up to the mineshaft. In the dark, Lincoln couldn’t be sure of the puddle’s depth. It was too wide to step over, even with his long legs. He sighed, shuffled a toe to the edge of the water, and dipped it in. It didn’t seem deep, only rising to the top of his sole.

  Lincoln consulted the crude map in his hands, the camera shifting wildly toward the cinderblock walls. The map hadn’t marked these stairs. He put the flashlight between his teeth and held open the paper, retracing his turns through the mine. He had made every one. This tunnel had been the last: an arrow drawn above the words to ARCHIE. Lincoln folded the map and stuffed it in his jacket pocket.

  He crept through the puddle. On the far side, his left foot sank down into a hole, filling his leather shoe with water. He jerked it out, but not before the water soaked the cuff of his khaki pants. He left the water behind, the shoe squishing with every step. Here the passage stank of mold, and he covered his nose and mouth with his jacket as he plunged on, looking for a break in the concrete walls.

  Lincoln ducked his head as he walked even though he had six inches of clearance above him. He rubbed his three-day beard, a nervous habit. He had never liked tight spaces. But the passage didn’t narrow further, so Lincoln pretended the darkness didn’t conceal walls that were so close he could have reached out and touched them.

  When the passageway ended in a short drop-off, Lincoln stopped. Below, the floor changed to stone. The block walls on either side also stopped at stone. Ahead, a hole opened into a tunnel running perpendicular to the concrete passage.

  “Nice cool breeze coming from the opening.” Lincoln shone his light through the hole. “Ah. Finally, a sign.”

  A rusted plaque hung on the wall inside the new tunnel. Avoiding another puddle of water, Lincoln stepped down into the new tunnel to examine it. The moldy smell vanished.

  He aimed the camera at it. “Alien Research Center for Hostile Invasion of Earth. ARCHIE. At least I’ve found the right place. You’ll notice the sign doesn’t explain what’s down each corridor. You know what that is? A bureaucratic lack of imagination.”

  Lincoln turned left, down Corridor A. Dry, dark walls of chiseled stone arched twenty feet overhead, gleaming in the beam of Lincoln’s flashlight. He walked slowly, scanning every inch of the corridor. Within a few yards, he had reached the top of a steeply descending metal staircase. He shone his light down in an effort to see the bottom, but darkness quickly swallowed it. The walls narrowed around the stair. Lincoln licked his dry lips. Why hadn’t he thought to bring water with him?

  “And this part I really don’t like. I didn’t sign up for this. You hear me, Cummings, wherever you are?”

  His shoe rang softly on the first step. He turned to look behind him, shining the light back down the corridor. Quit stalling, he told himself. He returned the light to the darkness below and proceeded down the stairs. For several minutes he heard nothing but the clanging of his rubber soles on the metal steps and saw nothing but smooth stone walls closing in on him.

  Finally the stairs ended in a narrow space that would barely accommodate two people side by side. A rusty metal door with no handle loomed directly opposite the last stair. The doorframe completely blocked the passage, joined to the stone by large bolts.

  “Why did they seal the corridor? See?” He ran the camera around the doorframe. “I am more than a little intrigued.” Lincoln banged the door a few times with the butt of his flashlight and felt around for a latch or release lever. He shone the light around the walls, looking for a keypad or some kind of switch, but found nothing.

  Dreading the steep climb ahead of him but eager for the larger tunnel above, Lincoln turned around and ascended the stairs. By the time he reached the top, his heavy breathing was bouncing off the close tunnel walls. Corridor B waited, so he trudged along past the sign without resting. Corridor B was smooth with walls of the same arching dark stone. It opened abruptly into nothing.

  “Wow,” he said softly. “The air is cooler and fresher in here than in the corridors, and significantly drier than the moldy concrete passageway.”

  The flashlight did little to illuminate the vast space, and Lincoln turned on the spot carefully, checking the ground at his feet for a sudden drop-off. Satisfied he wouldn’t fall into an abyss, he trained his light on the wall of the chamber. Beautifully smooth and curving away, the wall reached straight up into the mountain. He tipped the flashlight and camera up to the ceiling but couldn’t see anything in the weak light.

  Lincoln walked to his right and looked at the stone wall. “We definitely need better equipment than a miniature flashlight,” he whispered. “Also, this wall is slightly curved. Don’t think you can see it on camera. Also don’t know why I’m whispering.

  “This room must be huge. My light doesn’t reach the other side or the ceiling.”

  He followed the wall, keeping it at arm’s distance. “Another breath of fresh air. I wonder where it’s coming from. Note to self—learn more about natural caves. Although this can’t be a natural cavern, it’s too intentional.” Lincoln ran his fingers along the wall. “The wall is completely dry, too. Is that normal underground? And if a breeze can get in, why can’t water?”

  He walked a few more paces and stopped. “Going to try a little experiment.” Keeping the wall on his right, he turned off the flashlight and waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. He might as well have been blind as he groped his way along the wall a few more paces, waiting for the breeze on his face again.

  A sound echoed to his left. Lincoln paused, listening. “I just heard something,” he said, still whispering. “There it is again. Scurrying, like a rat. Or a bat? Guess I should have thought about the local wildlife. What lives this deep underground?” Racking his brain for answers, Lincoln hesitated to turn on the light, knowing he would be seen long before he saw anything himself. He sh
uffled on, looking for any glimmer of light.

  “There. More air.” A breeze caressed his face, cooling his sweaty forehead. “Brrr. It’s suddenly much colder. I bet the temperature just dropped twenty degrees.” Lincoln shivered. The earth rumbled beneath his feet, sending an unsettling vibration through his chest. “Don’t know if the camera picked that up or not, but the ground just shook, like a small earthquake.”

  Lincoln mopped his brow with his sleeve. As he did, the ground shook again. This time he grabbed the wall to keep from falling, dropping both the flashlight and the phone. As he fumbled in the dark to find them, the sound of running water echoed from somewhere far away. He found the flashlight at his feet and turned it on, then found his phone, undamaged. His hand shook as he swept the light around the vast room. Everything looked the same. The dimly illuminated wall to his right was smooth and unbroken. Everywhere else was darkness.

  “Don’t know if the camera picked that up, but it was definitely a tremor.”

  Lincoln walked all the way around what turned out to be a gaping circular room. Arriving at an opening, he looked down and saw his own boot print in the dust, confirming it was the entrance to Corridor B.

  “No doors but this one. No panels, no keypads, nothing. And I hear water, but I didn’t see any or find the source of the breeze. So far this room has offered no explanation for its existence.” Lincoln sighed and shone the light around one more time. He could still hear the distant trickle of water. The earth rumbled again, less violently. The sound of running water ceased, and everything fell completely silent once more. Annoyed, Lincoln turned off the camera, left the chamber, and returned to the sign to stare at it, wishing for answers.

  He turned and climbed back into the cinderblock tunnel toward the mine entrance. Water splashed softly behind him. Lincoln paused to concentrate on the silence. The noise had been so faint, he really couldn’t be sure he’d heard anything. Still, he pivoted on his heel, holding the flashlight high. Nothing.