Blue Words - Part I Read online

coincidence?” smirked Malaki.

  “Do we go back?” asked Dorian. George stomped off down the black hall in answer, Gudrik grabbed her shoulder.

  “Ami, take the lead with Gudrik, Dorian put George between us, Malaki on rear guard.” ordered Kahn. With military precision, the Inscribed obeyed.

  “Thought you put them all to sleep?” whispered Malaki.

  “So did I,” grunted Gudrik, “Anyone not touched by the blood should be out.”

  The Inscribed flicked on the torches clamped to the barrels of their confiscated rifles and the group continued their exploration. “The lights will give us away in the dark,” said Dorian.

  “They already know where we are,” Gudrik grunted back. The butts of the weapons were pressed firmly to the Inscribed’s shoulders as they crept their way through the labyrinth. Small passages broke off along the way and down each one shadow crept and slinked as the torch beams passed.

  The first substantial room they found themselves in was a long concrete floored space which was lined with enormous stainless steel tanks. Light sprinkled the walls as the torch beams shone off them. The feeling which had been bubbling within Gudrik since his arrival was now a screeching roar. It was a feeling he had only ever felt once before, a feeling which he had dubbed the urge. It was now clear that this was the same urge he had felt in the lab, but on a much grander scale. There was no question in Gudrik’s mind what was in these tanks. Considering the power only a few drops of his blood held, in the wrong hands this stockpile was probably one of the greatest threats which humanity had ever faced.

  “We’ve found the blood store,” said Gudrik. Kahn simply nodded in response. He had suspected what the tanks contained, but at the same time prayed he was wrong. There was a pitter patter behind. All the gun barrels swung towards it, but the beams of light hit only emptiness.

  “Worry about the blood later, we need to find Tabitha,” George reminded them, anxiously walking ahead.

  They snaked from room to room, investigating as they went, Malaki creeping backwards panning his light side to side at their black tail, Ami doing the same from the front. The design of the underground level was uniform, but still confusing. A long curving hallway chiselled out of the earth, peppered with smaller off-shoots towards the inside of the arc. Each hall ended in a wider chamber. At the end of each of those chambers was an archway leading into yet another hall. The rooms which the team had passed through by that stage were all lined with tanks. The size of Kyran’s stockpile was truly staggering. It soon became disorientating moving through the subterranean cavern and dèjá vu was rife. It felt as though they were circling around, but it was impossible to tell how far around the circle they were. Eventually the creeping snake moved beyond the storage areas and into some larger and much more civilised rooms.

  These were lined on the roof and walls and if they didn’t know better, the group could have been in any normal surface building. The first two rooms which they passed through were established laboratories, very similar to the ones Gudrik had raided only twenty four hours earlier.

  “Why have this facility if he already has the medical labs in the city?” asked Dorian. “It seems excessive.”

  “I assume he uses the official facility mainly for recruiting and cover, I am sure any really edgy stuff is done here. Here secrecy can be assured with more force than a non-disclosure agreement,” whispered Ami.

  “Where are the people?” George added shakily.

  “He knew we were coming,” grunted Gudrik sharply. “Now be silent.” Malaki let a snort sound from rear guard. He was ignored.

  In the final room of the laboratory set, one major difference leapt out. There was a long wooden bookshelf along the inside wall. It’s warm, oaken appearance was in sharp contrast to the cold, stainless steel of the rest of the room’s furniture. There was contrast too between its contents and that of the other surfaces. Instead of bizarre scientific instruments whose uses baffled them, it contained the fragile parchment and paper of numerous ancient texts.

  Gudrik lit his hand and rifled through the rolled scrolls, wooden cased volumes and delicately bound tomes. Memories danced through his mind. A smile cracked his hard face. They were in a wide collection of languages, most of which Gudrik was able to read. They truly were ancient, almost as ancient as him. Through the warmth of reminiscence one chilling theme cut though.....they were all about The Twelve. This was a facility with a single purpose, to merge the ancient knowledge with the technology of the time. This was a facilitly to manipulate the blood.

  BANG, BANG! Two gunshots echoed through the tunnel. The second sounded like a ricochet, but the first had ended in a meaty thunk. Dorian threw George behind a bench as they instinctually dropped into cover. Confusion spread. The rapid moving lights strobed and flickered about the room. “Who’s hit?” called Kahn as he fired in the direction of the shots.

  “Me! Shoulder!” shouted Malaki.

  A scuffle echoed from behind them, disappearing down the tunnel. Another was heard ahead of them. Gudrik leapt from his cover and chased the sound into the tunnel ahead; bullets held no fear for him. In the tunnel he paused, Kahn joined him. “No!” called Ami. The scuffle echoed again down one of the tunnel’s off-shoots. As Kahn shone the beam down it; a boot was glimpsed rounding the corner. Gudrik took off after it, the bobbing light of Kahn at his heels. Another long straight tunnel of shadow, no sign of the enemy. More gun shots rang out through the black cavern. These were not scattered, these were a firefight. “They were just trying to separate us!” grunted Gudrik, sprinting back the way they had come. “Ormstunga!”

  The two men emerged back into the larger main tunnel. Gudrik looked to the room they had been in, no lights, no sound. More shots echoed from further along the passage, then silence returned, lasting only for the briefest of moments. Soon moans and sounds of pain filled the air with ghostly wailing echoes. Kahn put his hand over the barrel light, dulling its effect and they crept down the passage.

  They moved swiftly through two more rooms and passed three more offshoot tunnels. Occasionally one would brush spent shell casings with their feet. Gudrik bit down into his wrist and whispered a command. At the words, the trickle spilling from his wound took form and gained mass falling towards the ground. In one fluent motion he caught it and rolled the axe a few times, remembering its weight and feel. It ignited spontaneously. The flames from the axe head flickered a montage of light and shadow across the walls.

  Gudrik stopped and pressed hard to the wall before the next archway. Moaning could be heard from the next room. He carefully peeked around. In the faint, flickering light he saw a bare space. No furniture, earth floor, earth walls. Simply a raw cavity carved from the very Earth herself with a small ventilation shaft in the roof. Three Inscribed sat inside, restrained and gagged. Dorian struggled on his knees, fighting at his bonds as blood streamed from his nose and mouth. The other two Inscribed showed far less fight. Ami appeared dead, lifelessly lying in a large, red puddle. Malaki writhed weakly and muttered delusional ramblings. He too was leaking red. A dead grey lay beside him, another in the entrance to the other tunnel. Their weapons had been swept to the side. Two live greys, a man and a woman, stood over them, glaring at Gudrik, daring an attack.

  The fact that warriors of the Inscribed’s caliber lay captured, indicated a beautifully planned and executed trap. He dared not take the bait. Gudrik looked at his feet. Once again their host had cleverly used salt. Across the doorway was a thick line which followed the edge of the room around, forming an unbroken ring. An arched Perspex bridge covered the salt ring at the doorways, shielding it and cleverly protecting it from foot traffic.

  Footsteps echoed through the black of the opposite tunnel. Gudrik stayed clear of the salt trap. His fingers twitched with eagerness around the axe shaft. Life flickered in the lights and they once again shone. The Warlock squinted. The footsteps grew louder and clearer until finally a man stepped into the room. He seemed out of place in his fine
tailored suit down in the dusty, bare cavern. He was flanked by two men, one huge, the other smaller than Gudrik. The smaller was a grey; the giant however, was clad in heavy, black body armour, body armour which Gudrik had seen before, but with one subtle difference. The huge man at his right wore armour emblazoned with a great white hammer. One of Dorian’s darts protruded from his shoulder. His black body armour was slick with blood but he seemed unconcerned. He was a moving mountain who had to lower his head to pass through the tunnels. His arms were as thick as Gudrik’s legs and they made the massive .905 calibre assault rifle he held look tiny. A long ginger goatee hung braided from his chin, brushing on his chest and was the only hair to be found on his bulbous head.

  The suited man stepped forward to speak. There was no denying, it was Kyran…..or Drake, whatever he wished to be called, his was a face forever etched into Gudrik’s memory. He spoke, his expression hard and emotionless, “Greetings Gudrik of The Tw-/.”

  Before the welcome was finished Gudrik sent his axe spinning. It hurtled in a swirling vortex of white, yellow and orange straight at Kyran. The shot struck with a heavy thud and buried itself deep into his chest, the impact so great that it launched Kyran back