The Descent

​pov:Jarrah 

​The last guard on the upper landing went down with a muffled groan, his body collapsing against the carved wainscoting of the library. My knife was back in its sheath, my hands slick with sweat and cordite, my breathing coming in short, ragged gasps that burned my lungs.

​I didn't care about the blood on my tactical vest. I didn't care about the throbbing ache in my left shoulder where a graze had torn through the fabric.

​I stood in the center of Alastair’s private library, a cavernous room lined with leather-bound volumes and smelling of old paper and expensive brandy. The heavy oak desk was shoved aside, and behind it, a section of the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf had been cranked open on a greasy iron track, revealing a dark, yawning concrete stairwell leading straight down into the bowels of the earth.

​From somewhere deep below, muffled by thick stone and heavy doors, came the faint, distorted sound of a gunshot.

​"Malia!" I roared, the name tearing from my throat with a raw, unbridled agony that echoed off the high vaulted ceiling.

​No answer. Just the hollow drip of water from somewhere in the dark and the low, mechanical hum of an air-handling system trying to push oxygen into a tomb.

​I didn't hesitate. I dropped down the threshold, my heavy boots hitting the first concrete step with a jarring thud, and plunged into the subterranean gloom.

​The stairwell gave way to a narrow, low-ceilinged stone hallway lined with ancient brickwork and modern security wiring. The air here was foul, thick with the stench of damp earth and sulfur. I kept my rifle raised, sweeping the corners, my eyes straining against the absolute blackness.

​A tiny click echoed from the wall ahead.

​Instinct honed by a thousand near-death experiences saved my life. I threw myself flat onto the stone floor just as a high-pressure jet of liquid fire erupted from a hidden copper nozzle set into the stonework above.

​The heat was instantaneous and blistering, singeing the tips of my hair and turning the damp air into a stifling, superheated fog of smoke and steam. The automated defensive grid. Alastair was burning his own rats out to keep them from reaching the bottom.

​I rolled twice through the burning grit, ignoring the searing pain across my back, and came up on one knee. Through the roiling wall of black smoke and orange flame, I saw the second thermal trap cycling, the tiny red sensor light blinking greedily on the opposite wall.

​Without thinking, I raised my assault rifle and emptied a short, controlled burst into the sensor housing. A shower of electrical sparks rained down as the internal wiring short-circuited, the flamethrower sputtering, coughing, and finally dying with a pathetic hiss of spent gas.

​The hallway was choked with thick, acrid gray smoke that made my eyes water and burned my throat with every desperate breath I dragged into my lungs.

​I didn't slow down. I pushed through the haze, the heat radiating off the stone walls like an open oven, my boots slipping on the slick, soot-covered floor.

​"Malia!" I screamed again, my voice cracking, losing all its professional discipline, turning into the raw, desperate prayer of a man who had nothing left in this world if he lost the one light that kept him human.

​At the end of the corridor, through the billowing smoke, I saw it: a heavy iron-reinforced door hanging half off its rusted hinges, the frame splintered inward as if struck by a battering ram. And from inside the cell, coming through the haze of smoke and damp, I heard the unmistakable sound of a struggle and a voice that cut through the fire and the ash like a blade.

​I broke into a dead sprint, my rifle raised, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped animal, charging headfirst into the dark.