26

FELLING THE LIMESTONE PILLARS

Helen's lips had only just located the delicate hollow of Nikola's throat when his radio sprung to life. Nikola growled, turning his head to the insistent buzzing. The radio was busy grinding against the stone in desperate want of attention. How that damn piece of plastic crap had survived an apocalypse and drowning in microbe infested water he'd never know but it sure as hell annoyed him.

"What?" he snapped, barely bothering to hold it to his ear as Helen hesitated. Her lips were a breath above his skin, hovering wickedly. He could feel her long, wet trusses brush over his shoulder, driving him insane.

"Tesla, sir?"

Nikola narrowed his beady eyes. "Rutherford?" Some of the venom drained from his voice.

"Yes! I wasn't sure if I had the right comms channel. How do we even have radio down here?" he puzzled, eyeing the thick rock overhead.

"I re-invented radio," Nikola replied, thoroughly deadpan. Helen snickered against his skin, hiding her smile behind his neck.

"Oh – amazing!" There wasn't a trace of sarcasm in Rutherford's reply. He seemed genuine impressed by their resident genius.

"Rutherford..."

"Are you busy right now?"

"Immensely – ow!" Nikola yelped, as Helen bit into his neck. "I mean, 'no'."

"I need to ask you something."

"Ask me now."

"No – something in person," Rutherford replied hurriedly. "Something you will want to hear."

The last vampire alive pushed through the crowded tunnel, displacing mortals against its walls. It didn't take him long to find the new security headquarters. The remainder of Prosperity's security force along with private guards and the mercenaries shipped in for the murder investigation had banded together in what Nikola considered to be a rather dangerous choice of safe house. It was a large series of connected caverns with idle, shallow streams washing through various tracks in the rock. Eerie though the blue water was, Nikola was more worried about the stalactites stabbing out from the ceiling. Hundreds – perhaps thousands of these crystal forms grew along a band of limestone that was caught up between black layers of Lodestone. The rust in the delicate rock dribbled down with the water, making the entire place look as though it has been besieged by a melting, blood-red candle.

"Fucking creepy..." he hissed.

"Tesla!" Rutherford stood up from a group meeting. Everyone was busy trying to string together a working system of law and order before the panic wore off and humanity's natural, depraved side resurfaced. "My office is this way – come."

'Office' was a pretty generous description. 'Alcove' was more accurate although Rutherford at least had a metal door welded over the rock to give them some privacy. Nikola perched on a bulge of rock he presumed was meant to be a chair. He couldn't help wondering if this was the future of humanity, hunting about like rats in an underground maze, feeding off the dying breaths of the planet. Probably.

"This better be good, Rutherford. I'm a very busy vampire."

It wasn't Rutherford that spoke. Out of the darkness that occupied the corner of the alcove, emerged a hooded figure. A cave creature – with its head bowed and concealed under a thick drape of cloth. Its hands were clasped in front of its body, their tell-tale blue almost metallic as I glistened in the weak light.

"Major..." Nikola whispered, when he realised who it was. "You look – well."

"The word you're looking for is blue," Major Smith reached up and nudged his hood down to his shoulders. If the blue hands had been a shock, the man's eyes were positively terrifying. How fragile humanity was that it could be corrupted by a few stray microbes.

"I wasn't sure if you were still alive," Nikola admitted. "We haven't been able to establish a definitive roll call yet but your face was conspicuously absent."

"Tesla, I'm not here to talk about the lingering stain of humanity on this planet."

Tesla took a double take at the Major. It wasn't just his skin that had changed. There was something of Mars about him now. "No? Tell me then, why all the secrecy?"

"Because apart from Rutherford," Smith nodded meaningfully at the man he'd come to admire, "the only person I trust – is you. Are you any good with secrets?"

"You insult me..." Nikola lofted his eyebrow. His life was a tangled mess of secrets.

"I mean – can you keep a secret – from her."

Nikola shifted uneasily. "It's not my preference," he admitted. "Though there are corners of me that Helen Magnus is not privy to."

That was good enough for Smith. He gestured for Rutherford to also sit before he joined them, clustering around the lonely table. "I've found the creature the Cabal came here to hunt," he whispered.

An hour in and equipped with the truth, Nikola shook his head. "You really should go to Helen with this," he said, leaning on the table. "I don't know how many times I have to remind people – abnormals are not my area of expertise. I dabbled in it, played along with Helen's little field trips but all in all, I'm an engineer. I make things – not dissect them."

"We cannot trust her, not yet. The creatures of the mines are very protective of their secret. They have known the truth all along but have never told any of the other scientists and with good cause. I shouldn't even be telling you but I feel it may be vital to our case. I think the creatures are one of the reasons that our victim was killed – and that changes our suspect list quite dramatically. Look, Tesla – I know how look but I'm still a detective. If it's the last thing I do, I'm going to solve this."

"So, do you think a creature murdered one of our victims?" Nikola frowned.

"Perhaps – we have to consider what Edwards knew when he was killed. There are only two reasons to kill someone over information – to obtain it or silence it. I think it's pretty safe to say that Hill found out the same secret as Edwards and was killed for it."

"Wait," Rutherford interjected. "Does this mean that you're ruling out John Druitt?"

Smith nodded. "Druitt's been here a very long time and by that I mean, I found files dating his arrival as early as two-thousand-four-hundred. He knows more about this place than anyone. If he wanted those men dead, they would have been in pieces a long time ago. No. Our killer is someone new – I'm sure of it."

"And someone not prepared to kill Druitt," Rutherford added thoughtfully.

Nikola found the other two men staring intently at him. "What?" he narrowed his eyes at them. "Seriously what?"

"We think it was Ashley Magnus."

An eerie concentric ripple spread through the hydrogarden's waters. It was caused by a sudden vibration in the bedrock. Helen looked up – another building on the surface had just fallen into the sand. The pillars of Prosperity were tumbling, one by one. Soon it would be a curious bulge of gravel.

"What are you doing, honey?" Helen asked, lingering outside the area her daughter had decided to call 'home'. She was lacing up a hefty pair of caving boots with her backpack spilled open beside her. An array of torches, batteries and weapons were undergoing a careful process of selection.

"I thought I might have another go at the tunnels – you know?" she replied. "See what's down there. I don't like the idea that we're just open to the depths of Mars. It's creepy."

"I agree with you there," Helen had to admit. Their entire life-raft of civilisation was perched over a honeycomb of unexplored tunnesl. "Just – be careful."

"Come on mum," Ashley rolled her eyes. "You know me and monsters – I always win."

"It's not that, there's still a killer out there somewhere – not to mention your father."

Ashley nodded at the radios. "I'm not stupid," she insisted. "I'll be in contact all the time. Besides, if I stay cooped up in these tunnels I'm going to go mad. I always hated coming down here at the best of times."

"I'll still never understand why you came to Mars in the first place," Helen sighed. The parts of her daughter that she didn't understand were an infuriating mix of John and Gregory.

"What's the point of Immortality if you spend it all in one place?" Ashley shrugged, though there was something disingenuous about her reply. "I thought I might try Europa next – what do you think?"

Helen lofted her eyebrow. "I'm grounding you back on Earth, is what I think."

"Aw mum..." Ashley complained, stretching the laces on her boots so tightly they wailed and nearly snapped. "There are some really creepy things in those tunnels. When I was doing support work for Cascade, patching their leaking aqua ducts there were sections of tunnel that didn't seem right – I don't know exactly why but the rock was cut differently. It was all smooth and square. Square pipes," she repeated, remembering what it was like to run her hands over that polished rock. "I ain't never seen that, not even on Mars."

"I've seen rock like that," she admitted. "Black... Almost a wall of mirrors. We're not engineers though. It's probably all in the blueprints for this place."

She shrugged, slipping on her jacket. "Then have your pet vampire take a look. I reckon it'll loft those eyebrows of his just as much of mine. I'm telling you – it's weird – weirder still was when I asked Edwards about it, he totally shrugged me off. He's usually quite the talkative type. I got the feeling he didn't want to talk about what's buried in this planet."

Could she have done it? That was the only question that mattered in Nikola's mind. Was it possible? The longer that the thought about it, the more difficult it became to rule Ashley out. Like her father, she was a creature capable of violence and like her mother, she'd pursue her own ends to whatever extreme they may lead. Nikola knew very well that if it was in Ashley's interests, she could kill in cold blood. He'd seen her do it – seen her slice through human and abnormal alike when they crossed her path the wrong way.

Yes. As much as he hated to admit, Ashley was capable of killing Hill and Edwards. She even had the opportunity and no alibi. That left the very important why. He wasn't about to jump to conclusions until he could lay a decent motivation on her. The only thing Nikola was one hundred percent positive on was Helen's innocence. For one, she was on Earth at the time of the first murder and secondly, he could read her. She was trying to solve this murder as earnestly as he was. The best shot at solving the mystery with the fire creature was to employ Helen's help but she'd never cross her own daughter and that left Nikola no choice but to keep Smith's secret.

On the rooftop Ashley had hinted that she was on Mars for an abnormal but he was sure that she hadn't found it yet. There was too much disappointment in her voice. Nikola agreed with Smith, Ashley was here to hunt that thing and he was doing the right thing protecting the creature from the Magnus family but that didn't equal murder. Ashley wasn't stupid enough to kill the only two people who might know the creature's location.

This time, he was ambushed with by a kiss.

"You left something undone," she insisted, pawing at his clothes. He doubted they'd last long as her elegant fingers undid buttons and left zips hanging victims.

"Actually I – had a – question for you..." he was interrupted by a barrage of kisses.

"So do I," Helen replied, biting down on his shoulder as his shirt was pushed aside. "I think the questions can wait."

Nikola murmured some form of agreement before sinking to the floor.

Dishevelled but mostly unharmed, Nikola tapped away at his laptop. He'd fashioned himself a wireless charger, feeding energy from the lengths of wire passing overhead, strung over the bare rock. Every now and then he frowned severely, shook his head in confusion and swiped at the screen, flicking between blueprints. The tunnels that ferried water under Prosperity were all public record. He'd very quickly realised that any secrets had been hidden in the sheer volume of information. Part of him thought it might be faster to write a search algorithm to find what he was looking for but after his baby virus had turned on him, Nikola was a touch hesitant about programming at the moment.

"Oh, for heaven's sake! Oy!" Helen reached out and whacked him across his back with her tablet. He'd been ignoring her for hours.

"Okay – what?" he hissed over his shoulder, caught somewhere between a pout and glare.

"Quit ignoring me."

"I heard you the first time."

"Why didn't you respond?"

"I was waiting for you to say something interesting." This time he was hit much harder.

"I thought we were having a conversation! Did you hear anything at all that I said?"

"All of it," Nikola promised. "By the way, your headstrong offspring might have a point."

She tempered her frustration. "About the tunnels?"

He nodded. "They are – for lack of a better description, awkward. Cascade's water ducts go out of their way to incorporate these strange fragments into their design. No engineer would lay a water network out like this. The whole system defies the most basic fluid dynamics."

"These 'fragments', could they be natural structures? Lava tubes or tunnels in the Lodestone."

"Helen," he set his tablet down. "We both know what those fragments look like. You described them to me. I think the place you were held was one of these things."

"Nikola, I feel like we're about to stumble into something we're not going to like..."

"I think it's the secret that Edwards and Hill were trying to protect."