Текст книги "Total Eclipse"

Автор книги: Rachel Caine

Соавторы: Rachel Caine
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 18 страниц)

Weapons, built for maximum damage. Even dormant, even stored, that energy swirled and eddied around them, restless and hungry. Disturbing. I swallowed hard, stood at the door, and swiped my card. There were all kinds of warning signs telling me that I had to follow strict security and safety protocols while inside this facility. Yeah, I was going to absolutely do that, first chance I got.

The biometric scanner lit up, requesting me to put my hand on the glass. I did, and while it was reading, I reached deep inside the works and blew it apart. Easier than it sounds, with high technology. When your security depends on soldered connections, you are screwed if an Earth Warden wants in.

The security designers were good, but not quite good enough. I managed to intercept the signal that zipped over to the door to tell it to lock down and sound the alarm, and converted the energy into the all-clear electronic pulse.

The door popped open, and I stepped into a sterile little anteroom, with another, identical scanning system at the far end. Protective gear was neatly stored, and I put on a suit, more for blending in than for what it would offer me. Second door, same verse, and then I was inside a hallway. There, a large, colorful map indicated that I was in a blue section. Blue section was the least dangerous, I gathered.

There were a few workers in this part of the plant, but a confident walk, a wave, and a badge seemed to do the job nicely. Nobody was doing much at the moment; operations were at an idle, and boredom had set in. I followed the color-coded maps to the elevators at the far end. More biometrics, which was a pain in the ass; I hoped they hadnt security-locked the bathrooms, too.

Finally, after the third biometric I had to destroy, I decided to take an end run around the problem. Fire codes said that all security doors had to open in the event of a fire emergency.

I created one. Not a big one; I didnt want to bake anybody, or even give them smoke inhalation, but I pulled some jittery power from the electronics and built myself an impressive-sized fire in a nest of empty boxes in a storeroom. Fire suppression kicked in, but with a little concentration, I was able to keep the fire blazing despite the countermeasures.

Thirty seconds later, the biometric scanners began flashing FIRE EMERGENCY, and I heard the clicks as secured doors began to unlock. The elevators stopped working, but I could get around that; it was a simple mechanism, and I needed to go all the way to the bottom anyway.

I stepped inside just as three people in protective gearone with an automatic weapon slung over itentered the corridor and looked straight at me. He had fast reactions, and I couldnt jam his gun and keep the fire going at the same time. Too many balls in the air.

He got off five shots, aiming straight for my chest.

Chapter Nine

I dont remember getting hit; my entire concentration was on slamming shut the elevator door, cutting the cables, overriding the friction brakes, and letting the car drop in a free fall. At first I felt sick and dizzy, and figured that was an effect of the falling, but then I smelled blood. I looked down and saw two separate wounds in my side, ragged holes puncturing my protective white suit. I unzipped it and stepped out. There wasnt any pain yet, or a lot of bleeding, though red rings were steadily forming on my lab coat around the bullet holes.

Fantastic, I said. Thats just great.

Gravity was definitely a harsh mistress, and never more than at a time like this. I watched in Oversight, gauging how far Id fallen, how much farther still remained, and trying to do complicated math in my head. I was approaching seriously terminal velocity, and I was going to have to start slowing my descent.

Jo! Davids voice, blasting unexpectedly from the speaker in the elevator. I jerked, and my concentration shattered. Pain began an insidious drumbeat in my side, dammit, too soon. . . .I pushed it, and David, aside and concentrated harder. I was sweating now. Shaking. And there was a growing pool of blood forming around my shoes, how had that happened? Didnt seem right.

I dropped to my knees, then pitched forward flat on my stomach. I screamed at the impact, because damnthat hurt, but it was important to try to distribute impact force over as wide an area as possible.

I reached out for power in the air around me, found it, and began building a thick, cold cushion of air beneath the falling elevator. I increased its density, and felt a significant decrease in the speed at which I was falling.

But I was still falling.

David was saying something, but I couldnt pay attention, not anymore. I needed more power, more braking, and I needed it now.

I couldnt get it. When I reached out for power, it slid through my grasp like oil. I felt weak, clumsy, and wetoh yeah. I was wet because I was lying in a pool of blood.

David was almost screaming at me now. I couldnt spare a second of concentration; I had to maintain what Id already done, keep slowing down, try to make this crash survivable. I was running out of elevator shaft.

I threw one last, ultimate effort into it and eased the car to a sliding, jerking stop.

The button dinged, and the doors opened.

For some reason, I couldnt get to my feet. Maybe because the blood was slippery. I was a mess, and I needed a bath, a nice warm bath to let all of this float away. . . . That sounded good.

But I forced myself up, bracing myself with both bloody hands on the doors of the elevator. My vision was spotty, with circles of darkness swallowing the glare of white lights. Everything seemed to be moving except me.

Walk, I told myself sternly. You have to do this. Now.Because deep down inside, I knew that I wasnt going to have the strength to wait and do it in a more orderly fashion.

I didnt make it very far, but then I didnt have tothis whole area was hot and live with the kind of thing I needed. This was a storage area, deep underground, and the doors were massive affairs on hydraulics. There were six doors. I fell at the first one, flailed around on the floor for a while, and left a hell of a bloody mess trying to get up. The control pad was way the hell up there. That seemed wrong. Why didnt they build them closer to the floor, for convenience?

Oh, the hell with subtlety.

I blew the door off its hinges in a massive burst of superheated air. It flew over my head, slammed into the far wall with an impact hard enough to be felt in Switzerland, and embedded itself in the concrete to a depth of at least a foot.

Inside that storage locker, about the size of a medium-sized residential home, were stacked row upon row of containers marked with vivid red radiation warning stickers. All very neat and orderly. The aetheric here seethed black, and my own distress didnt help much.

One more thing to do.

I triggered a reaction.

It wasnt really all that hard; destruction never is. All I had to do was put some chemical chains together, add heat, pour in energy, stir to a rolling boil.

I didnt have enough left in me to set up any kind of protective shieldingnot that I thought it would have worked in any case. I hoped that the evacuation had worked. I hoped that Dr. Reid and his people were safely outside the facility.

Right now, though, that was a very moot point.

I rolled over on my back, staring up, and my last conscious thought was of David. How much I wished I could die in his arms, if I couldnt live in them.

I heard his scream echoing through the hallways a second before the brilliant flash of light, and then it took all the power I had left to hold the explosion in, point it down, driving it like a spike deep into the skin of the Mother.

Then there was just . . . light.

And dark.

I didnt expect to ever open my eyes againwho would, really? After exploding a stockpile of nuclear material? Who the hell survives that?

Me. Im just lucky like that.

I opened my eyes and found myself floating in a sheer bubble surrounded by flames and destruction. I was still bleeding. There was a pretty significant amount of red pooled at the bottom of the bubble, and my clothes were soaked. My heart was struggling to keep on pumping what little remained.

So, I wasnt going to go out in a blaze of glory. Id just bleed to death, lying here inside of this protective cocoon that I swore I hadnt constructed, and wasnt maintaining. I couldnt have, because there was almost nothing left inside me to use.

Someone had saved me. Sort of. And I hated them for it.

Something moved, out there in the fire, in the rubble, in the chaos of smoke. I breathed slowly, steadily, listening to my laboring heart, and watched the figure come clear.

It was the Djinn Venna, in her Alice in Wonderlandblue pinafore. Her pale, long hair shone in a shimmering curtain around her shoulders. Her hands were clasped in front of her small body.

Her eyes blazed milk-white.

I kept you alive, she said. Dont you want to thank me?

Not really, I said, and coughed. That hurt, as if I was tearing pieces of myself loose with every movement. I ended up sobbing, and tried to stop. Let me go.

No, Venna said, and watched me with icy focus. You hurt her. We all felt it. The others will all come here to hurt you in return. I have to keep you alive for them.

This was the part that Lewis and I hadnt discussed, because it was a terrible thing to even think about. Hed hoped, as I had, that Id be dead, obliterated in the destruction.

Survival was one hell of a lot worse as an outcome. I wished I could willmyself to death, but there are some things I just couldnt manage, and my heart refused to do anything but keep beating, beating, beating.

Venna, I said. Venna, you have to help me. Please help me.

No, she said. It was a flat, inhuman sound, and there wasnt even any anger behind it. There was nothing.You stay alive.

I should have been dead already, I realized; from the amount of blood Id lost, and the fact that the flow had slowed to a leak from the wounds, Id alreadybled out. Whatever my heart was pumping, with such great effort, through my veins was not my blood.

I was an animated corpse, living at Vennas whim.

I remembered Davids screams, and I wondered if he knew. I wondered if he could see, from that distant, cold vantage point of Jonathans picture window, helpless to stop this, helpless to do anything but grieve. If he left, if he tried to rescue me, hed be lost himself. Dont do anything crazy, I begged him silently, through the cord that still, even now, was holding us together. Let me go. Let them do whatever they want, so long as they come here and leave the Wardens alone. Ill hold out as long as I can.

It sounded brave. I didnt feel brave, not at all. I felt sick, weak, and dying, and more than anything, I didnt want to hurt anymore.

Venna was joined by more figures, moving out of the aetheric shadows and into the real world. Some of them I recognizedthere was Rahel, glowering at me with real hatred. Ashan, the leader of the Old Djinnhe, at least, didnt need any incentive to loathe me. Hed gotten a jump-start, early on. I saw plenty of Djinn Id clashed with before, only a handful of whose names Id ever learned.

So many Djinn, all with those eerie pearl-white eyes. All stalking me like tigers. Talk about overkill.

I floated in my blood-soaked bubble, waiting for the end.

Venna was the one to make the first move. She reached through the force bubble and ripped a hole in it, gutting it from within. It made a sighing sound, and disappeared, and my blood fell in a sudden rain to the smashed concrete and steel. Followed by my body. I screamed as I hit, although Id sort of promised myself Id keep my dignity and not give them the satisfaction. Yeah, that hadnt even lasted until they actually touched me.

Venna leaned over me as I struggled to right myself. She reached out with her little-girl hand and touched my cheek in a curiously gentle way, cocked her head to one side, and thenwith no warning at allshe walloped me so hard that I flew ten feet into a broken wedge of folded steel. It had once been a door, I supposed. If I could have bled more, I would have. It didnt seem at all fair that I could hang here in this state, on the edge of death, and that my nerves hadnt shut themselves off yet. It would be okay if I couldnt feelthis. But that was the whole point: they wanted me to feel it.

Every last bloody second of it.

I coughed and clawed my way out of the rubble. I got to my feet and stood there, trembling but erect. I lifted my chin and said, Thats all youve got? You hit like a girl, Venna.

She bared her teeth and became a feral animal, rushing at me with clawed fingers and snapping teeth, and I knew this wasnt going to go well, not at all.

But Id signed up for the whole ride, hadnt I? Id known what I was getting into, and in that split second before Venna actually reached me, I gave up all hope of living through any of it. That was a black kind of peace, perversely comforting.

Something hit Venna before she reached mea pale blur, something big and muscular. Venna was knocked off course, into a pile of rubble. Her screams of rage pulverized a few of the concrete blocks into beach sand, and I blinked, amazed that I was still standing.

There was another Djinn standing in front of mefacing away from me, toward the others.

Oh.

It was the nameless Djinn whod been chauffeuring us around the country. The vessel. The avatar.

And now, it said, with my own voice, Stay away from my mother, you bastards!

Imara. My daughter, the Earth Oracle. Like David, she couldnt leave her own personal stronghold, where she was holding out against the madness of the Djinn . . . but shed found a way to remote-pilot the avatar, the same way David and Whitney had done.

Imara? I blurted. What are you doing?

Saving your life, I think. Honestly, do you ever stop doing insane things? What were you thinking? The Djinn glanced over his shoulder, and in his expression I saw my daughters harassed shadow. You shouldnt be here. I cant believe you walked into this with your eyes open.

Would you feel better if Id blundered into it stupidly?

Maybe I would. Imara snapped the Djinns head back around as Ashan walked forward, and I felt the energy change, grow darker. Ashan had killed my daughter, in her original Djinn form. She hadnt forgotten that, not at all. Back off.

He didnt seem to even hear her, or care that there was any kind of obstacle standing in his way. When he got within reach of the Djinn, Ashan simply reached out and pushed, and the Djinn went flying, off balance and overmatched. The only comfort I took was that Imara herself wasnt being hurt. She was safe, somewhere else.

Ashan was looking every bit the vicious, smooth businessman hed always appeared to me. Hed always been partial to well-tailored suits, and this one was gray, matched to an off-white shirt and sky-blue tie. His physical form had no more personality to it than a store mannequin.

He reached me, not seeming to hurry at all, and grabbed me around the throat. He did that alien head-tilt thing, just like Venna, as if trying to decide exactly what type of pond scum I might be, andstill holding my throatturned and dragged me toward the others. Venna had gotten up and was engaged in mortal combat with the Djinn avatar, who was doing hisher?level best to keep the kid away from my back.

But my dangers were also right in front of me, and there were a lot of them.

Ashan pulled me into the middle of the Djinn, then turned and stared right into my eyes.

Tell us why, he said. Why you did this.

I needed to get your attention, I wheezed, around his iron grip. I think I have it now.

You do. Ashans smile was as artificial and cold as the rest of him, and just as assured. You will regret it.

Oh, sweetie, soahead of you on that one. Let me go or Ill bleed all over you.

Promise? His smile widened. Maybe soon well let you die. Would you like that?

I had my hands free, so I shot him a finger. Not as much as Id like to watch youtry it. It was getting harder to talk around his kung– fu grip, and I wasnt sure that last smart-ass remark came out as anything but garbled chokes. Ashan liked to play with his food. I thought that as long as I was giving back, he wouldnt move on to the next phase of agony.

Maybe.

The avatar had lost his battle with Venna. That didnt surprise me much, but it did alarm me. It meant that Imara was playing hurt, or handicapped. Normally, she could have wiped the floor with any Djinn who got in her way, but now the avatar was down, battered and hurt, and Venna was stepping calmly over the body to get to me.

The beaten Djinn avatar rolled over and up to its feet, but it wasnt in any shape to come at Venna again on my behalf.

The Djinn looked past Venna, at me, and I saw my daughters torment in those strange eyes. Mom, she said softly. Get ready. Hes coming.

Ashans hand gripped tighter, bending cartilage in my throat, and what little air I was gasping in cut off. I flailed at him, and it made no difference. None at all.

It never occurred to me to wonder who hewas, until a shadow formed in the corner of my eye, and David walked out of it, carrying a . . . box?

I was clearly hallucinating. Oxygen deprivation.

David put the box down, lunged forward, and grabbed Ashans arm.

And brokeit.

Ashan yelled in surprise and let go of me as he stared down at the dangling odd angle of his forearm, then caught hold of it with his left and snapped it back into a straight line, reconstructing the damagebut it gave David time to grab me and pull me away from Ashan.

Davids eyes were molten bronze, blazing so hot I could feel the feverish intensity behind them. He glanced at me once, a frantic, horrified look, and then put his attention on Venna, who was shrieking toward us like something out of a first-rate horror movie.

He slammed her back, into the Djinn avatar, who in turn slung her hard into a wall and pinned her there.

No time, David gasped. He was trembling now, and I could feel the fear in him. Jo, in the box. You know what to do. I

He cried out, fell to his knees, and I watched the David I knew disappear. He fought it, oh God he fought it with everything in him, but he was a Djinn, and a Conduit, and he couldnt hold back.

I watched his eyes turn pale, then white.

Panic drove me to follow his orders. I could lose myself; I could stand that. I couldnt see him reduced to a puppet, something used to hurt me. He wouldnt survive that. God, why had he done this? Hed been safe!

I ripped back the top of the box and found . . . bottles. Lots of bottles, all with corks in the tops.

It came to me in a blinding rush what he wanted me to do.

I grabbed the first one I could reach, popped the cork with my thumb, and focused on David as the Mother took possession of him.

Be thou bound to my service! I yelled, and didnt dare stop for a breath. Be thou bound to my service! Be thou bound to my service! As incantations go, it wasnt muchI spit the words out so fast that they were almost incomprehensible, and for a terrible second I thought Id rushed toomuch . . . that it wouldnt work at all.

It felt like the entire Djinn world took in a collective breath, and I knew I had only a few seconds to live. They wouldnt be playing with me anymore now. Not anymore.

David screamedan inhuman scream, torment and furyand dissolved into mist.

Venna, behind me, broke free of the avatar and lunged for me. If she could force me to break the bottle before I corked it, hed go free.

I hung on to the slippery glass like grim death, and corked it. I hadnt waited for the mist to flow inside, but I hadnt really needed to; it was the corking that mattered, and suddenly I felt a complex network of power snap into place between me and David, overlaying the bonds we already had.

Now all I had to do was release him.

Venna hit me like a freight train just as I thumbed out the cork, and I was smashed against the floor. Somehow, I managed to cradle the bottle against breakage, and I curled in on myself, holding it, keeping it safe.

The Djinn piled on me, and I knew, as I felt unnaturally hot, strong hands take hold of parts of my body, that Id be ripped to pieces.

David reformed in the middle of the Djinn and fought them off. That sounds simple. It wasnt. His eyes blazed bronze again, and I could see the focus and fear on his face as he stood over me and wreaked damage on his fellow Djinn. It allowed me the space to crawl away, inching along over broken concrete and steel to where hed left the box.

The avatar was there, holding bottles with the corks already out. He passed me one, and I focused on Venna, who was ripping at David like a wild animal. Shed kill him, and me, if she wasnt stopped. Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service. Be thou bound to my service.

I got all three iterations out before Venna reached me, and she shrieked and disappeared. I hadnt been at all sure that it would work on the Old Djinn; Id suspected it wouldnt. But maybe, somewhere out there, somebody liked me after all, despite the evidence to the contrary.

I corked the bottle and slotted it back into the box. The avatar, in turn, threw me the next empty. This time, I targeted Ashan.

Ashan snarled and misted away before I could complete the incantation. Coward.

Rahel didnt run. She leaped like a spider out of the shadows as I turned my concentration on her, and sent me, and the bottle, flying before I could stammer out more than half the incantation. The avatar dropped what he was doing and grabbed her, wrestling her to a halt before she could rip my head off, and I finished gasping the last iteration out: bound to my service.

Screams. Mist. A cork in the bottle, which went back in the box.

But the rest of the Djinn werent going to let me continue this; most of them had been corked before, and even if they hadnt been under the Earths control theyd have come after me in earnest. Theyd killed Wardens for far, far less.

David broke free of a knot of them and backed up to stand over me. He dragged me to my feet and said, Get us help.

He meant Rahel and Venna, locked in the bottles. According to the rules that governed bottled Djinn, neither he nor any Djinn could touch the containers once theyd been filled. I had to open them myself.

One of the other Djinn thought faster than I could move. She couldnt touch the bottles, but she couldtouch the box they were stored in, and she overturned it, sending dozens of bottlesall corked, all identicalskittering over the debris. Two of them were full. I just had to find those two.

It wasnt quite a needle in a haystack, but hanging as I was on the edge of death, it was close enough.

Keep them off me! I shouted to David and the avatarwhether Imara or Whitney was piloting it now, I couldnt telland lunged for the first bottle. I uncorked it. Nothing. I dropped it where it lay and went to the next. Nothing, again.

One of the bottles was smashed. I hoped that wasnt one of the two I was looking for, but I didnt see either Rahel and Venna coming to wreak unholy vengeance on me, so probably not.

A Djinn grabbed my ankle as I reached for the next bottle, and yanked me toward him. I managed to close my fingers around it as I was dragged backward, and as I felt him take hold of the other leg, I knew he was going to wishbone mejust rip me in half with one pull.

I uncorked the bottle, and felt that rush of power and control settle in.

Venna formed, blue eyes calm and utterly in control. She looked down at me, nodded, and grabbed hold of the Djinn who was about to subdivide me. Venna didnt mess around. She couldnt kill him, but she couldand didrip enough out of his physical form that he had to mist away and recover.

Then she turned to me and helped me up. I was now holding twoopen bottles, hers and Davids, and it occurred to me that balancing another one was going to be problematicbut I needed to throw Rahel in on their side. There were far too many possessed Djinn, not enough defenders, and already David had bloody cuts on him that werent healing. It was a sign of how much power he was expending.

Plus, I needed healing, and I needed it fast, so that I could funnel power to my Djinn before it was too late.

Under normal circumstances, David could have healed me, and I could have replenished his power after I was feeling betterbut these circumstances were far from normal. We were in a smoking, radioactive hole in the ground, fighting for our lives against an enemy that could, at any time, destroy us all.

I went up into the aetheric, looking desperately for something, anything to help . . . and found it, heading our way at a very fast clip. Two bright, shimmering spots that radiated power.

Wardens.

They were still minutes away, but they were coming, and they were powerful. It would help. With two more Wardens to anchor the bottled Djinn, and capture others . . .

But first I had to make it until they arrived.

Venna and David suddenly left their individual fights, heading for the same spot at the same time, which looked like a recipe for disaster. I should have known better. One of the Djinn had picked up a massive section of concrete, and was pitching it out of the shadows and smoke at me. It would have flattened me like a cartoon if it had landed.

David and Venna caught it and threw it back into the Djinn, bowling a few of them over. But David staggered, and I saw his wounds start to bleed more heavily. Venna also was looking less than steady.

Because I was losing ground, too. Adrenaline had sustained me for a while, but now I could feel my body starting to lose its way. Having the additional drain of the Djinn didnt help, either.

I didnt think I was going to make it until help arrived. That might have been a character flaw, but I could feel the resignation growing inside of me, the willingness to finally, ultimately just . . . let go.

David looked at me, and I saw the emotion in his face, the knowledge. He understood what I was feeling, and thinking, and he couldnt bear it. He couldnt.

He exchanged a look with Venna and backed up next to me, took me in his arms, and poured energy into me, healing me in a hot, burning rush that made my body arch against him in a parody of love. I heard myself screaming, I heard him whispering to me, frantic and desperate.

No! Venna said sharply, and grabbed David and pulled him off me. She shoved him away, at the oncoming group of three Djinn who were coming at us. Stop them! He let out an anguished yell and hit them head-on.

Venna grabbed my hands and took up what David had started. She poured power into me in a burning wave, forcing my body together and sealing it with more power than Id ever felt. It hurt, oh God, it felt like being boiled alive, and I knew I was screaming but I couldnt stop.

She wasnt just healing me, she was undoing what shed done to me beforeand that was some serious magic. Whatever shed done to suspend me at the edge of death, it had been significantly more powerful than Id thought.

Venna drained herself dry. I saw the blaze in her blue eyes die down, go dim, and then go out. She released my hands and started to disappearbut not into mist. Into sharp-edged shadows, angles, an alien and terrifying geometry that I recognized instantly.

She had just given up so much of herself, so fast, that she was becoming a creature made up of hunger. She was losing herself, but not to the Mother; she was losing herself to desperation.

Her eyes turned black, all black.

Ifrit.

I think that some part of Venna was still aware, because instead of battening on the closest possible DjinnDavidshe bypassed him, grabbed hold of one of the three he was fighting, and hooked her oddly angled, blackened limbs around the other Djinn. Ifrits fed by ripping away aetheric energy, draining their victims as they voraciously and endlessly fed, to sate a hunger that couldnt really be stopped, not by any power short of an Oracles.

Venna had brought all her primitive fury and power to it, and within a matter of seconds, shed reduced the screaming Djinn she was holding to ashes. Ashes.

Shed destroyed him utterly.

The stronger the Djinn, the more viciously predatory the Ifrit could becomeand Venna was, without question, the most fearsome Ifrit I could dare to imagine. She went after another victim, who prudently misted away and left the fight.

I was still shaking and sweating, on my hands and knees. I felt better, and much worse, at the same time; light-speed healing will do that to a human body. Id be dealing with the aftereffects for days. For now, though, I needed to overrule my bodys shock, and just get on with it.

David helped me stand. He was watching Vennas rampage, lips parted as if he literally couldnt believe it. I wasnt sure I could, either.

Venna shifted and made for a Djinn I knew slightlyshe was exotically beautiful, with white hair and eyes that normally glowed a brilliant yellow. She tried to mist away, but Venna was quicker, and sank her claws into the Djinn, who howled in rage and pain.

We have to stop her, David said. Shell kill everyone. Everyone.

I scrambled for Vennas bottle and said, firmly, Venna. Back in the bottle. Back in the bottle. Back in the bottle!I almost added, Dammit, because she wasnt listening to me. . . . But then, inevitably, the compulsion set in to obey, and she was dragged away from her victim in a mist of shifting black that oozed slowly back into the glass container.

I jammed the cork in.

There were still ten or so Djinn facing usno small number, and Ashan could decide to pop back in at any minute. But Venna had bought us just enough time. The Wardens were here.

And they were Earth Wardens, which was good; the radiation in here would fry Weather or Fire Wardens. Two Earth Wardens would be a lot of use.

I wasnt prepared for who theyd be, and it took me a few seconds to recognize the man scrambling down the maze of broken concrete toward us. Heor theyhad cleared a tunnel along the way, so I could see faint glimmers of daylight, far above. He was Hispanic, good looking in a tough-guy kind of way, with muscled arms that rippled with flame tattoos. Like most Earth Wardens, he favored jeans and hiking boots, which served him well here.