Silver Master

Chapter 18

“GOT NEWS FOR YOU, I AM TAKING IT PERSONALLY.” Davis gazed up at the ceiling. He was screwed. It had been too much to hope that she wouldn’t wake up when he carried her into the other room, too much to hope that she might not have a problem with the fact that he wanted to sleep alone.

He didn’t want to sleep alone. He wanted to spend the rest of the night with her curled tightly against him. He wanted to wake up in the morning and find her in his arms.

But he didn’t dare take that risk.

It was a long time before he fell asleep. When he did, he dreamed.

He held the child tightly in his arms. The kidnappers were not far behind. They were still invisible in the maze of catacombs, but it wouldn’t be long now before they closed in. They were homing in on the frequency of the amber he wore in his watch.

He had just ditched the watch in a nearby tunnel. He had backup amber set at a different frequency, but he could not risk using it yet. It would not take the men who were following them long to pick up the second signal and realize that he had switched amber.

There was only one chance left.

“Close your eyes and don’t move, Mary Beth. I promise you that if we both stay absolutely still for the next few minutes, the bad men won’t even see us.”

“Okay,” Mary Beth whispered.

She clung to him, one arm wrapped around his neck, and regarded him with the solemn trust that only a six-year-old child could give. It was a miracle that she had any confidence in him at all after what she’d been through. She had never met him before in her life. But forty-five minutes ago he had rescued her from the kidnappers, and she had believed him when he told her that he had come to take her home.

The sounds of the approaching men were closer now. They were using a sled. There was no way a man carrying a six-year-old kid could outrun one.

Not much longer, he thought. Maybe thirty seconds. He had to get the timing right, or he and Mary Beth would never make it out of this chamber.

Mary Beth closed her eyes and pressed her face against his chest, a child trying to hide from the monsters under the bed.

The sled was very close now. He could hear the sound of the simple amber-drive motor. Only the most primitive kinds of engines worked underground.

“He’s close,” one of the men said, excited. “We’ve got him. Can’t be more than a hundred feet away.”

“Move it,” another man said. “If he gets out of here with the girl, we’re all dead.”

“Stay very, very still, Mary Beth,” he whispered. She froze in his arms.

He pulled silver light. A lot of it.

The sled hummed loudly. It rolled out of one of the ten vaulted entrances of the underground chamber. And then the driver brought the damn thing to a halt, right in the middle of the room.

“Check the frequency,” the driver snapped.

He held his breath and his focus, counting the seconds.

One minute.

The second man on the sled studied the amber-rez locator. “Straight ahead.”

Two minutes.

“You sure?” the driver demanded, looking at the nine other doorways.

“Positive. I’m telling you, I’ve got a solid reading.”

“I don’t like this,” the third man said uneasily. “Something doesn’t feel right.”

Three minutes. The men continued to argue. Mary Beth did not stir, although he could feel her little body shivering with fear.

Four minutes.

“All right, let’s go,” the driver said, making the executive decision.

The bastard finally rezzed the sled’s engine. The little vehicle shot across the chamber. It made straight for the vaulted doorway, zeroing in on the frequency of the amber watch that lay on the quartz floor just inside.

The sled passed within a yard of where he stood with Mary Beth pressed tightly against his chest.

Five minutes. An eternity.

“Ghost-shit,” the driver howled. “That’s his damned watch. He tricked us.”

But it was too late. The driver couldn’t stop the sled in time. It plowed straight through the faint shadows cloaking the vaulted entrance of the tunnel, triggering the alien illusion trap.

The men screamed when they were plunged into the trap’s psychically generated alien nightmares, but not for long. No human could stay conscious for more than a few seconds under those conditions. Mary Beth jerked at the sounds.

He stopped working silver light. He was breathing hard and already starting to shake. He didn’t need to test his amber to know that he had melted it. Luckily he now had a fresh supply.

“It’s okay, Mary Beth,” he said. “The bad men can’t hurt you now.”

She raised her head and looked at him with big, amazed eyes. “They went right past us, but they didn’t even see us.”

“No,” he said. “They didn’t.”

He had to move quickly. The clock was ticking. He had maybe fifteen minutes at most to get back to the rendezvous point and turn Mary Beth over to the team. At least they now had the sled. With the illusion trap triggered, it was safe to go through the doorway to get it.

“It was like we were invisible,” Mary Beth whispered, watching him kick the three unconscious men off the sled.

“Yeah.” He checked the slab’s amber-rez locator. It was functioning. “Like we were invisible.”

He made the rendezvous point. The last thing he remembered was the face of the hunter who took the girl out of his arms. Then the cold chills swept over him, and everything faded to black.

FIVE DAYS LATER HE AWOKE TO DISCOVER THAT HE was trapped in a living hell named the Glenfield Institute, dimly aware of what was going on around him but utterly unable to communicate. He could smell the coffee the doctors drank and hear their grim diagnosis.

“Psi coma. He may never come out of it. Even if he does surface, he’s going to be a total burnout case. He’ll spend the rest of his life in a parapsych ward.”