“We’ll take him from behind while he’s distracted,” said Natasha. “No time for anything fun; shoot him down. Aim for the body; I don’t want his pretty face damaged. We can use him as bait to attract the other two. And then . . . we can give our full attention to sorting out whatever it is that’s going on down here. After all the trouble I’ve been put through, I think I deserve a really big prize.”
“I think we need to think about this some more,” said Erik, diffidently. “The cat head said other-dimensional, and I’m inclined to believe it. These instruments are picking up some strange readings. Really powerful readings; almost off the scale. We don’t want to bite off more than we can chew.”
“You speak for yourself,” said Natasha.
SEVEN
TO WAR WITH DEMONS
If you go to war with demons, you must be pure in your intent.
Drawn remorselessly on, like a fish on a line, like bait on a hook, Kim Sterling was dragged struggling backwards through the corridors and tunnels; and JC ran after her. He pursued her up and down stairs and around sharp corners, sometimes drawing close but never, ever, allowed to catch up. Now and then her ghostly form would be pulled suddenly through a solid wall, and JC had to hunt frantically back and forth before he could pick up her trail again. He could always hear her, even when he couldn’t see her, calling out to him in fear and anger or richly cursing her unseen abductor, and that kept him going . . . She hadn’t given up, and neither would he. He pounded headlong down corridors and passageways, breathing harshly, legs and ribs aching, his arms pistoning at his sides. And somehow Kim was never hauled away so fast that JC couldn’t keep up—as long as he pushed himself to his limit. The chase was a challenge, a taunt, goading him on, almost allowing him to catch up, then snatching Kim away again.
JC ran on, back and forth through the maze of corridors, on and off platforms, up and down the stationary elevators, knowing that the chase was meant to break his spirit, to force him to give up and abandon his new-found love. But he wouldn’t do that. He had already decided, quite calmly and rationally, that he would drop in his tracks first.
JC was so caught up in the chase that it took him a while to realise that his surroundings were going through subtle, deceptive changes.
Passageways seemed to stretch away before him, their ends growing more and more distant as the walls grew infinitely longer, elongating unnaturally like the passages we run through in nightmares, with no hope of getting anywhere. He ran and ran, and Kim receded endlessly before him. But the floor beneath his feet was still reassuringly hard and solid, so JC lowered his head like a charging bull and ran on. The walls on either side of him seemed to slump and bulge inwards, as though they were melting, then snap back into form again, all their details smudged and meaningless, but it took JC a while to realise that he didn’t recognise anything and had no idea as to where he was.
He wished Happy were with him, to tell him whether what he was seeing was real or another illusion broadcast by the unknown enemy. JC scowled and pushed the thought away. He’d had to leave Happy behind, and Melody. Focused as he was on the chase, JC still had it in him to feel bad about leaving them to fight alone. He had faith in them. They were both trained, experienced agents. They’d manage. But that wasn’t why he’d left them so readily. He’d abandoned his team-mates because he couldn’t abandon Kim to her fate. He hoped they’d understand. He ran on, breathing really hard, a fire in his chest and an almost unbearable pain shooting through his sides.
Endless corridors, endless walls spattered with images out of Hell, howls and screams and hopeless sobbing all around him. Illusion. Had to be. JC kept his head down and concentrated on pursuing the only thing that mattered. His trained will was a match for any illusion. Unless . . . whatever was down in the darkness with him was actually so powerful it could distort Space and Time itself . . . in which case, he was in real trouble.
He rounded a corner and staggered to a halt as he saw Kim hanging in the air at the end of the new corridor. He fought for breath, half-bent over as sweat dripped from his face, glad of the chance for a break but already looking about him for any trace of a new threat. And that was when the walls on either side began to close in, moving remorselessly forward from both sides at once. The suddenly very real and solid walls ground loudly against the hard floor. JC straightened up immediately and looked behind him; but he was too far down the corridor to escape. He couldn’t hope to reach either end before the walls slammed together. They were closing in on him steadily, taking their time. They looked heavy and solid enough to crush him to a bloody pulp. And they would do it slowly, inch by inch, while Kim watched. JC risked a glance at her. She was looking at him beseechingly, imploring him to get out of there. Her lips moved, but no sound came to him as she silently begged him to save himself.
JC shot her a reassuring smile. He breathed deeply, dragging air far into his lungs, gathering his strength and calming his mind. Sweat was still running down his face and stinging his eyes, and he took a moment to pull out a handkerchief and mop his face clean. Kim stared at him wildly, hardly believing he would waste time while the walls were closing in to crush him. JC put his handkerchief away with a flourish and looked left and right to check how close the walls were. The harsh grinding sound of their progress across the floor was very loud, and very near. At the speed they were moving, his death would be a slow and horrible thing, with the cracking and breaking of bones first, then the slow crushing of inner organs, as he literally died by inches. He’d probably be alive right till the end, so Kim could suffer as much as he did.
JC was really looking forward to meeting his unseen enemy and teaching it the error of its ways.
He stretched out both arms, hands splayed, as though he intended to stop the incoming walls with sheer brute strength. But JC had been trained better than that. The Institute prepared its agents to be strong in all kinds of ways. JC calmed his mind with familiar and well-rehearsed routines, drew on his inner resources, and quite simply refused to accept what was happening. The walls couldn’t be moving because the unseen enemy wasn’t strong enough to rewrite physical reality. It couldn’t be. JC defied the evidence of his senses and denied the movement of the walls through sheer strength of will. He closed his eyes and stood there with arms outstretched . . . and nothing came forward to touch his waiting hands. He slowly opened his eyes, and the corridor walls were back where they belonged as though they had never moved. Because, of course, they hadn’t. JC slowly lowered his arms. He smiled at Kim, still hanging unsupported at the end of the corridor, and she smiled back.
Inside, JC was laughing his head off. He’d bet his shirt the enemy had been bluffing, and he’d won. It wasn’t that powerful, after all. And that . . . was good to know.
He walked forward, and Kim hung there before him, dangled before him like a toy, or a lure. JC kept his approach slow and careful, not allowing himself to run to her, and his heart leapt a little when Kim didn’t move. He made himself stop a careful distance away, somehow knowing that if he tried to free her from whatever held her, she would immediately be snatched away again. So he stood before her and smiled at her, and she smiled back, and they talked in quiet, calm, rational voices.
“You have to give this up,” said Kim. “You can’t keep chasing me. It’s killing you. I don’t want that.”