Eddie Lancaster Box Set 2, page 58
part #4 of Eddie Lancaster Series
‘Well, in that case, maybe you could help me out with something else…’
We arrived at the research facility just after four pm. The entrance was just outside Cedarstone and far away from anything else. I mean literally anything else. We’d been driving down a barren stretch of road for about twenty minutes before we finally came to the turning which took us through a tunnel of trees. The complex looked like it had been built right in the middle of a forest. We passed a sign saying:
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE PROPERTY
KEEP OUT
‘Nice and inviting,’ Zeke joked as we drove on by. A couple of miles later we were stopped by a tall chainlink gate and fence. The fence was covered in more signs warning trespassers they might be shot if they went beyond this point. There was a small guardhouse on the other side of the fence. Two soldiers dressed all in black emerged from the guard house and looked curiously up at the motorhome. Zeke and I were the only ones in the front of the vehicle. Lydia was guarding Ben in the back.
The soldiers opened a smaller gate by the guardhouse and stepped out onto our side of the fence. ‘This is government property. You can’t be here,’ one of them called up to us. They each had some kind of assault rifle strapped around their necks and they both carried a holstered pistol as well. This was worse than I’d thought, the building looked like it was being guarded by the military.
‘What do we do?’ I whispered to Zeke.
‘Stick to the plan,’ he replied calmly. I was entering panic mode at the sight of the guns and forgetting what we’d already devised earlier. I’d been in worse situations than this before but this was different and I had no idea what the government had cooked up in the time since I’d exposed our kind to the world. They could have created some pretty effective warlock-hurting weapons and I really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of those. Whatever they might be. Plus, the stakes were much higher than they’d ever been. This wasn’t just about going to prison. It wasn’t about ending up dead. If I fucked this up then I was in for an eternity of punishment. I couldn’t take any chances.
The soldiers whispered something to one another and then the rifles came up. Terrific.
‘Step out of the vehicle!’ one of them ordered. ‘Now!’
Zeke nodded at me and then together we swung open our doors.
‘Come out slowly!’
‘Yes, alright. No need to shout,’ I moaned at the soldier. So bossy.
They made us move around to the front of the vehicle, keeping our hands raised. Once they had us side by side they stood directly in front of us, never once lowering their weapons for even a millisecond. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a gun aimed at your face but it’s pretty uncomfortable.
‘Why are you here?’
‘We just got a little lost,’ Zeke said, shrugging as much as he dared to. Any movement might be taken the wrong way.
The soldiers knew it was a lie. I could tell by the expressions on their faces. It was a mingled look of irritation and exhaustion. I wondered how many warlocks had tried to gain access to this place. And what had happened to them?
Zeke cleared his throat. That was the signal. We both swept our hands upwards decisively. Both rifles were yanked up toward the sky and out of the grips of the soldiers. Thanks to the straps around their necks, the soldiers were dragged with them. They stumbled forward as their weapons pulled them. I had no idea if it would work, but I tried anyway. I lifted my hand and snapped my fingers in the face of my soldier. His eyes widened in alarm as if he thought I’d done something far worse. Then he promptly fell asleep and crashed to the tarmac. Zeke put his soldier down too and we both let out a sigh of relief.
‘Good job,’ Zeke told me like a boss to his employee.
‘Thank fuck there were only two,’ I said with a nervous laugh.
‘Don’t congratulate yourselves just yet,’ Ben said as he emerged from the motorhome, being pushed out by Lydia. ‘This was just stage one, remember? There are a lot more inside. None of my friends managed to infiltrate this place and they were more skilled than either of you.’
Zeke bristled at his words and shot a disgusted look his way. ‘There isn’t a warlock alive with more skill than me.’
‘Now, now. Let’s not fight,’ Lydia said. ‘We’ve got shit to do.’
We realised the first flaw in our plan pretty quickly. There were only two soldiers and we needed three uniforms. Also, Zeke was too big for any uniform. We’d be hard pushed to find another person as big as the wizard was.
‘We’ll just have to have two prisoners,’ I said. We were all in the back of the motor home getting changed. I was pulling the kevlar vest, or whatever it was, over my torso. The uniform fit surprisingly well. The boots were a little small so my feet were cramped, but it could’ve been worse. Lydia came out from the bedroom and I laughed when I saw she was drowning in the uniform she’d stolen. Being a skinny girl, the large man’s uniform was incredibly baggy.
‘I can help with that,’ Zeke said. He touched each garment that she wore in turn and they shrunk to her size in a jiffy. She suddenly looked quite snug. The armoured vest did not shrink which led us all to believe that it had iron beneath the padding.
‘If there’s iron beneath the padding then that’s going to be a problem,’ I said, indicating the vest that I was wearing. The iron would cut off my magic, but without it, my disguise would be pretty shoddy. I held out my hand and summoned a ball of magic. A glowing purple ball appeared a few inches above my palm, pulsing with radiant power.
‘It’s not iron,’ Zeke said. ‘But it’s definitely resistant to magic. I felt it when I touched it.’
‘As long as it doesn’t cut my magic off, I don’t care,’ I said. All that mattered was my ability to throw spells around. Unless the building really was lined with iron.
‘Now, I will play prisoner, but I am not putting on those cuffs,’ Zeke added, pointing at the handcuffs hanging from my belt.
‘Me neither,’ said Ben, shaking his head adamantly.
‘Oh, yes you are,’ I told Ben. Zeke was out of my control, but Ben actually was a real prisoner and the last thing we needed was him getting any funny ideas in the heat of the moment. ‘Either we neutralise with cuffs, or we neutralise you with these.’ I wiggled my fingers at him and he squirmed away from me. ‘That’s what I thought.’
He reluctantly offered me his wrists and I cuffed him tightly. I was nice enough to keep his hands in front of him rather than pulling them behind. Zeke agreed to pretend to wear the cuffs on Lydia’s belt so it kept up the illusion that he was a prisoner. He positioned the cuffs around his wrists but didn’t lock them in place. All he would have to do was shake them off when the time came to fight. We all knew that a fight was coming once we were inside that building. We just hoped we could avoid it until we had the Ambrotos Dagger.
Lydia pressed something and ejected the magazine from her rifle. She fiddled with it until she’d freed a single bullet that she then proceeded to examine. ‘Iron’ she said, confirming my suspicions. ‘Alloyed with silver,’ she added as she noticed the additional material.
‘Do they get much trouble from werewolves?’ Zeke asked Ben. The warlock shrugged and remained silent.
We climbed out of the motorhome and looked around. The coast was still clear. Zeke had a syringe filled with a sleeping potion that would keep the soldiers out for a good few hours. Sleeping spells didn’t last that long. Zeke boasted that his spell would last longer than mine but he couldn’t guarantee it would last as long as we needed.
He injected the soldiers and then we hid their semi-naked bodies in the woods under a cloaking spell. I felt a little bad because they were probably going to get fired when their boss found out what had happened here. If all went to plan a lot of people were going to get fired by tomorrow morning.
‘Let’s do this then,’ Lydia said as she pulled on her helmet. She seemed fairly optimistic about the whole thing. I was not and I imagined I looked far more grim as I pulled my own helmet on.
We walked through the little gate on the path and began walking along the road. Eventually, we came to the entrance to the building. There was no signage anyway. There was just a plain square building made of red bricks. Double green doors made of metal stood on the front of the windowless building. Two more soldiers stood sentry on the doors. Neither of them was anywhere near Zeke’s size. He would have to remain a prisoner.
My grip tightened on the rifle instinctively as we approached. I’d never fired any kind of gun before and had no idea how. I imagined you just pulled the trigger, but I could be completely wrong. I didn’t even know what kind of rifle I was holding. My knowledge of firearms was so poor there was a good chance it wasn’t even a rifle at all.
‘What’s this? Why have you abandoned your post?’ The woman on the door demanded. I could see a wisp of blonde hair sticking out from beneath her helmet. ‘Wait a minute. Who are you?’ She demanded, obviously realising we weren’t the two guards stationed on the gate.
Zeke didn’t hesitate. With a massive wave of his hand, both soldiers collapsed into a silent slumber.
‘Your friends found getting into this place hard?’ he said to Ben giving the warlock a derogatory look.
We injected the soldiers with Zeke’s potion. I highly doubted he had enough of that for everyone in the compound. We dragged them into the woods and cloaked them just as we had with the other two. Then we stepped up to the doors. It was time to walk into certain capture. Or death. We were about to find out which.
Chapter Twenty
I grabbed hold of the door and pulled. It didn’t budge an inch. I looked at Zeke, eyes wide in alarm. We could not be thwarted before we’d even made it inside.
‘Use the key card, dipshit,’ Lydia said, pulling her own from a breast pocket behind her armoured vest. She pushed it against a black panel on the side of the door. There was a quick double beep and then the door buzzed open. My cheeks flushed red. It was pretty silly of me to think I could walk into a military-defended base without some sort of key. Embarrassing.
Acting like real soldiers, Lydia and I pushed her faux prisoners through the door first. The door opened onto a set of winding metal stairs that ran deep under the ground. Our boots thudded off the metal loudly, sending echoes ahead of us to warn anyone down the bottom that we were coming. There was nobody down there, though. The stairs opened onto a corridor that looked like it ran the length of the universe. Long fluorescent bulbs hung from the ceiling igniting the corridor in bright light. Annoyingly, one of the bulbs about half way down was flickering. I flicked a finger and sent a shot of magic that killed the bulb completely.
‘Still got magic,’ Zeke said observantly. ‘The whole building isn’t lined with iron.’ A small smile lit up his face. Things weren’t quite as dire as we’d thought they were.
‘I suppose they can’t really experiment on magic if the whole building blocks it,’ I said.
We got moving down the infinite corridor. My palms were coated with so much sweat that I was having a hard time keeping hold of my rifle, it kept sliding in my grip. Any moment somebody could appear at the other end of the corridor and we’d be fucked with nowhere to go but forwards or back. That was probably why it had been designed this way. A stupidly long corridor meant that shooting down intruders would be pretty easy. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to duck for cover. I’d just have to hide behind Zeke if it came to it.
By the time we reached the end of the corridor, I was about ready for a break. Hell, I deserved one. The corridor forked off left and right. Two directions. No signs.
‘Now where do we go?’ I said in frustration. I stared at Ben, our guide.
‘Don’t look at me, I’ve never even been here before!’ he said a little too loudly. Zeke planted one of his meaty hands on Ben’s shoulder and gave him a warning glare. Ben gulped and didn’t say another word.
‘When in doubt, right is right. That’s what my mum always says,’ Lydia said. She gave Ben a gentle shove and he led us down the righthand route. We finally came to a door on the left wall and stopped. As we’d come to expect there was no signage indicating what was in there. But it was the only door around. I took hold of the handle and paused.
‘Maybe we shouldn’t. There might be soldiers in there,’ I said.
‘There could be soldiers wherever we go,’ Zeke pointed out.
Footsteps echoed towards us from around the far corner. We all shared a panic-stricken look and then Zeke shoved me through the door rather unceremoniously. Everybody bundled inside and then Lydia closed the door carefully behind us.
We waited in silence, heartbeats hammering so loudly we could all hear them. The footsteps gradually moved closer as did the chatter of voices. One male, one female.
‘Some of the devices I’ve been working with are just phenomenal,’ the female said excitedly. ‘Today I was examining what I think was a Celtic circlet that rendered the wearer impervious to all harm.’
‘Lucky you. I’ve been stuck in the blood lab for weeks now. They want me to find a way to shut down magic production in sorcerers permanently. I’ve told them it can’t be done. Not by me anyway. Now, if I were to…’ The voices faded away as they moved past. We waited a few minutes before any of us dared to move.
‘This place needs shutting down,’ said Zeke fiercely. I shared his sentiment completely. This was exactly what Clara Winters had always feared about going public. That the government would seek ways to control or eradicate us. I personally hoped that the scientists never made a breakthrough with their research here. I wondered if they had any idea how quickly this place would spark a war if the wrong sorcerers found out about it. Or anybody with enough influence to do anything about it. I turned to Ben who looked deep in his own thoughts. I couldn’t let him leave this place. If he spread word of the kind of research going on here then it would be a bloodbath. Warlocks would flock here in droves.
‘That woman said she’d been working on magical objects. The dagger is probably in the direction she came from,’ I said. I pulled the door open and we all headed off back down the corridor in the direction the scientists had come from.
Nobody had much to say anymore. Nobody wanted to be in this place a second longer. Each time we heard footsteps we hid in the nearest doorway. We were lucky that there was never anybody in any of the rooms we ducked into. It was mightily convenient that there weren’t that many people about at all.
‘Security here seems a bit lax, don’t you think?’ I asked the others. ‘Four guards outside and nothing at all inside. It’s a bit optimistic of them, isn’t it?’
‘That’s a good point,’ said Zeke. ‘Ben, how did so many of your friends get captured by only four guards? None of them seemed that hard to take down.’
We came to a door before Ben answered and relief flooded my brain. To the right of the plain grey door was a sign that read: MAGICAL OBJECTS.
Then the relief gave way to dread. The sign was not official looking. It was a laminated piece of paper, not a proper plaque like you’d expect in a place like this. And it was literally the only door we’d come across that was labelled. Hell, it was the only sign in the whole building so far.
‘This is a trap,’ I whispered to the others, afraid that somebody might be listening in. I hadn’t seen any cameras but there could be audio devices about. There could even be hidden cameras. Technology was pretty crafty these days. It had been two years ago anyway, things could only have gotten better since my death.
‘No shit, Sherlock,’ Lydia muttered.
‘If we turn now they’ll just shoot us trying to run. If we go in there then we might find something that can help us. Maybe that handy circlet is inside.’
‘No. No, I don’t like this at all. Let me go. I’ve done my part. You guys go in but I’m going home,’ Ben said nervously, fiddling with the cuffs on his wrists. ‘At least take these off for me. Please?’
‘Not a chance,’ growled Zeke.
‘Guys, listen,’ I said, trying to swallow my fear. ‘If we do get captured—’
‘When we get captured,’ Lydia corrected.
‘Try to stay calm. I will get us out of here. I promise you that,’ I told them.
‘Let’s hope you’re right,’ Zeke said. Then he grabbed the door handle and swung the door open. We all followed him in. I had to nudge Ben in with the tip of my rifle. At least we had guns.
The room was huge. And empty. Not a magical object in sight. I heard the door click shut behind us and felt the iron cut off my magic as if someone had thrown a net over me. I raised the rifle to chest height and waited. Zeke held out his hand and Lydia passed her rifle to him. She wouldn’t need it, her abilities were unaffected by the iron. Ben shimmied between the three of us, the only one who was unable to defend himself.
We stood waiting, rifles up and ready. Any moment now soldiers were going to pour into the room to apprehend us. But they never did.
‘I don’t feel so good,’ Ben said weakly. I turned his way just as his legs gave out and he fell like a log, crashing to the ground with a thud. I stepped towards him and the lightheadedness hit me all of a sudden, coming out of nowhere.
‘Oh… Shiii…’ I mumbled as my legs turned to jelly. ‘Lydia…’ As I fell I saw Lydia going for the door but she fell down before she made it. I hit the ground, my vision blurring heavily. A huge thump seemed to make the floor jolt and I guessed that Zeke had gone down somewhere behind me. Sleep was creeping over me fast. It was like a heavy mist was falling over me, racing through my brain, shutting each department down one by one. My lids started to roll down of their own accord, like the end of a show at the theatre. I needed at least a little nap. Not for long. Just a minute or so. I heard a door click open somewhere in the room and then my eyes closed completely.
Chapter Twenty-One
When I woke up I was sitting on an uncomfortable steel chair, or maybe it was iron — some kind of metal. My hands were chained to the metal table in front of me. I could feel the iron in the chains and all around me. It was smothering my magic completely. The chain was just long enough to allow me to sit up straight but not enough to lean back comfortably in the chair.
