“Agreed,” I said, staring down a long, wide tube with a metal ladder on one side. There was faint, crackling light coming from somewhere far below. I slid what she’d handed me into my back pocket and listened carefully for any sound coming from the depths of whatever lay belowground at Fort Eden.
“Good thing you’re not afraid of heights, Connor,” I said, imagining the old Connor Bloom, the one that had been terrified of falling.
I started down the ladder, feeling the rungs grow colder as I went, and immediately decided it was a bad idea. I stopped and started to complain, to reason with the others that we should go back, but Connor was the second one into the tube and he wouldn’t stop coming toward me. His body was a hulking shadow against the light of the world outside.
“Go, man! I don’t want to be down here all day.”
I didn’t move. I could feel the stupidity of what we were doing like a film of dread covering my body. I knew we shouldn’t do it. It suddenly felt all wrong just in time to have no power over what was happening to me.
“I’m going to step on your hand,” said Connor. He was staring down at me from above with a resolve that bordered on psychotic. “I’m getting those vials and you’re going to help me do it. Move.”
He placed one shoe on my left hand and began pressing down with his weight. Looking down, I saw that it was at least thirty feet more to the bottom.
“Okay, okay!” I shouted. “Back off!”
Connor removed his foot and I reluctantly went down another four rungs as someone else came in behind Connor, I couldn’t tell who.
If I could just keep Marisa out of here. At least that would be something, I thought. But I kept going, Connor’s relentless feet at my head, until I stood on a slick concrete floor and stared up. I could see all of them marching down the ladder in a line like little soldiers.
And at the very top, Mrs. Goring’s head, which suddenly disappeared.
And that’s when the metal door at the top of the ladder slammed shut, before half of us were even off the ladder.
I heard the handle turn way up there, grinding into the locked position, so it had to be loud. When everyone made it to the bottom, no one wanted to say what was really going on. We just stood there, still and quiet, and tried to come to grips with the reality of our circumstances.
We’d driven two hours out of LA, walked down a very long and steep path into a desolate wood known by only a few. We’d trusted a crazy woman and let her lead us a hundred feet underground.
And we’d let her close the door on us.
We were trapped.
Also by Patrick Carman
Dark Eden
Dark Eden: Eve of Destruction
Copyright
Dark Eden: Phantom File
Copyright © 2012 by PC Studio
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EPub Edition © 2012
ISBN 978-0-06-220133-1
FIRST EDITION
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Patrick Carman, Phantom File
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