Freedom

Chapter 32

It was probably the first time I'd ever been in absolute darkness. I'd been in the dark before, and this was nothing like it. But I didn't care about that – I cared about coughing up all this water. That took a couple of miserable minutes, during which I couldn't help but flash back to being dragged into the depths and tossed about by the vicious undercurrent. I was lucky not to have hit anything too sturdy.

My body was still immersed – sort of – in about a foot of fast-moving water that was so cold I don't even know how to describe it. I was clinging to a narrow rock ledge. Beyond that, I hadn't the faintest idea where I was. I could hear the water running. It was going quickly, but quietly. And there was something else. I held my breath.

Almost inaudibly, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata filled the space around me. It took a moment for me to realize it was coming from my own MP3 player, in one of my pouches. The cultists hadn't bothered to take it from me; it must have been activated during all the bumping around. I decided not to bother thinking about what had happened – I could think about that later.

I fumbled for the light on my chest, and got it turned on. To my surprise – and horror – it light up dark rock about two feet from my face. I'd known from the darkness that I had to be in some sort of cavern – but this was a bit smaller than expected. Not quite a coffin, but too tight for my liking.

I gingerly turned my trunk to move the light around. There was where the water was coming in, so that was how I'd ended up in here. The chain was still around my left foot, trailing into the water, and no doubt through that hole. The beam was likely wedged somewhere below. If it came loose and sank, I was dead – unless I could get free of it first. I got to work, and it didn't take long. When that was done, I crawled out of the icy water and onto the rock shelf, considering my options. From the pressure in my ears, I knew I had to be pretty far down.

I patted my pockets and pouches. My straight knives were gone. The throwing knives from my sleeves, boots, and thighs were gone. My smoke bombs were gone. All my gadgets were gone. Everything was – even my ration bars. It went without saying that they'd relieved me of my Glock and holster, ammunition, and first-aid supplies. Fortunately, I didn't seem to be bleeding from anywhere – I was just banged up in general.

But they'd left my MP3 player. I hefted it in my palm, then glumly tossed it into the water. Lot of good it would do me down here. I sat against the wall and watched the patterns reflected from the water on the stone wall. It was pretty. But not pretty enough to make me forget where I was, or that my stomach was growling.

Well, the sooner I got moving, the better. Waiting would just make me colder and hungrier, and I'd be MIA with my friends, if they were still alive. There was no going back, obviously. I'd have to fight the current to get out of the underground waterway and back into the channel, but that was beside the point. I didn't remember it clearly. Just a lot of darkness and bubbles – but when I'd been dragged into the water by the sinking beam, I hadn't been alone. There was something else in the channel. Something gigantic.

And it wasn't like I hadn't seen that one cultist get pulled in, because I totally had. I didn't know what was out there in the channel, but I did know that I was going to exhaust all my other options before I tried to swim my way out. And I had at least one option.

The air wasn't exactly fresh, but it wasn't as rank and stagnant as it would have been if I was in an actual air pocket. Somewhere in the dark, downstream, so to speak – there had to be an opening. I adjusted my light and started crawling that way.

What followed was a bit of spelunking that left me with mixed feelings. To my surprise, the opening was on the ceiling of the cramped chamber, and within easy reach. I could fit into it, and there was even a little room to spare, though only a bit. It led straight up about four meters, then went abruptly horizontal. This was a tighter squeeze, and I didn't like it, but I gamely wormed my way in and crawled. It was difficult to get my chest light pointed in the right direction, and often I had no choice but to feel my way through.

I felt excited that I was moving, making progress – that I wasn't trapped. And yet there was no guarantee that this would take me anywhere useful. It might lead me straight to the surface, but would there be an opening large enough for me to get out? If so, that would mean that it was also large enough for something to get in. I simply had no idea. It was an absolute unknown.

Whenever a vent in the rock led upward, my spirits lifted. When the only option was down, they sank. Half an hour after I came to, I estimated that I had climbed up about ten meters, and down another ten, putting me at roughly the same elevation I'd started in. I was at the bottom of a natural rock shaft, which was totally black, and there were a pair of openings for me to choose from – one large, one rather small. I decided to avoid the tight squeeze, and climbed into the large one, which sloped downward. Grimacing, I inched forward, then slid down. It was a natural slide, smoothed out by running water. That wasn't a good sign. Water down here would only happen if the levels in the channel rose – like in a storm. Like the one that had been going on last I checked.

And the water that filled the pocket where I'd awoken? Yeah – the channel's water level was rising. And if the rain kept up, all of this would be submerged. I hadn't gotten moving a moment too soon; I had to stay ahead of the water. I wasn't afraid I'd drown – though that, too, was possible. I was afraid of hypothermia.

I'd regained a measure of body heat with activity and enclosed spaces, but if I had to do any more swimming, I knew it would become a serious problem. Food would have helped, but I didn't have any. I didn't even have the means to start a fire. I mean, the cultists had left me my music, but taken not one, but both of the lighters I'd had with me? They'd gotten exactly what was coming to them.

The cavern dropped away beneath me. The shaft was wide – but I was able to brace myself in it, and move downward a bit at a time. This was muscle-intensive work. I could do it now, but after a day without food? Two or three? I tried not to think about it. Maybe I'd be back on the surface an hour from now.

Some rocks fell away from the side of the shaft, and a full three seconds passed before I heard them hit stone below. Don't slip, Mist.

I continued to ease myself down, thinking about what had happened on the ship, and when I'd started referring to myself as Mist instead of my real name. So the cultists had been there. There had been enough of them that you had to figure it was some kind of base of operations. They'd killed the guy Velvet and Frank had been hoping to meet.

They run around in the dark and take people alive, then string them up by the ankles and let out their blood. They don't shoot until shot at, and don't do a very good job even then.

That was small comfort. They were stealthy; their presence on the ship confirmed that. And worse, they were everywhere. Reports had been coming in from all over, and we'd seen evidence ourselves, even before reaching the ship – so it would have been naïve to think that we'd fallen upon the main nest, or whatever you want to call it.

No, it looked like there really was another faction at work in the Zone. An invisible one.