“That is, if the mortal is still alive,” Brock noted, and Kinzer could tell by the way everyone glanced at one another, none believed that was very likely.
“We are doing our best, though,” Kelley added. “We have someone on the inside attempting to keep him safe, but whether or not that will be possible, we won’t really know until judgment day.”
“But again,” Brock said, “the mortal is not our priority. Treycore is.”
“His name is Kid. He’s not some mortal.”
As his eyes met Quintz’s, Kinzer could tell Quintz couldn’t understand how he felt. Not just that he cared about Kid’s fate, but that he had dragged him into immortal affairs—and how his life had been forever changed because of it. In some ways, he wondered if maybe being at Jerry’s all that time would have been better for him. Surely not, especially when Jerry had been so eager to punish him severely for such a slight transgression.
“As we said,” Kelley interjected, “we are going to do everything in our power to ensure the safety of the mortal. We all understand the importance of keeping Treycore happy because he’s the one we need information from, so we are doing our best to protect the mortal, if that’s what you’re concerned about.”
As much as Kinzer was relieved to hear that, he hated that it was almost an afterthought—that if Treycore’s feelings weren’t on the line, Kid’s safety wouldn’t have even been a consideration for them.
Kinzer calmed himself down and took a breath. “So Kelley does this magic that tricks everyone into thinking two of the guards are Treycore and Kid, and we race out of there. What do we do once they figure out it’s all a ruse?”
“Run like hell,” Brock said.
“I’m so relieved we have a funny guy on our side.” Kinzer’s tone dripped with sarcasm.
“He was being serious,” Quintz said. “You’ve seen my operatives. We will have a few more immortals who are not in charge of distraction and who will be there to help us get to one of the main portals by the exit.”
“Portals?”
“We have a bit of an advantage here. You see, we have a machine that can create portals between Heaven and Earth.”
“No such thing.”
Quintz’s lips curled into that familiar smirk. “Follow me.”
He led them back through the hallways. When they reached another metal door, he used a key code to open it, guiding them inside, down a set of steps. Within a room in the cellar they descended into, a long desk was placed against the far wall. It was covered in black boxes, a few monitors, and what looked like an IBM desktop computer from the 1990s.
Quintz approached the empty space beside the desk and pulled a lever, which triggered the cement wall to slide to the side, into the adjacent wall, revealing a secret room with steps leading up to the cement ceiling.
“That doesn’t look like a portal,” Kinzer said.
“Well, that’s what all this stuff is for.” Quintz indicated the computers across the desk. “This is the Portal Transportation Device, PTD, we created during the War. Using some experiments with Teleporters, we found a way to manipulate existing portals to teleport between the realms without being detected. We developed the technology to travel between the realms in secret, using portals that weren’t as traveled. Secret ones that enabled us to get to and from the heavenly realms with ease, undetected by the Almighty or His emissaries. Before the trial, I will rig it so that it will bring us back here. And once we get through, I will seal the portal so that no one will follow us back through.”
Quintz approached the computer and typed on a keyboard.
“Using the coordinates of any known portal, we can tap into it, hijack it for our entry and exit. The beauty of it is that we can tap into a portal to enter the heavens through and then schedule another portal, somewhere convenient for our exit. Also, you won’t need an elixir to get through, being clipped and all. Mortals and immortals can get through the thing.”
When he finished typing, he clicked on the ENTER key, and a translucent film rushed across the ceiling at the top of the steps.
“Voilà.”
Quintz looked to Kinzer, as though expecting him to be impressed, but he was shocked more than anything else.
“I told you, I’m an engineer,” Quintz said before grinning like he was so damn proud of himself.
And Kinzer had to hand it to him. He was one talented motherfucker.
“Well, I’m glad you’ve accounted for getting us there,” Kinzer said. “And let’s say maybe, just maybe, this crazy scheme to rescue Treycore really works. What happens when we have him?”
“We get the codes for the Antichrist bomb,” Kelley explained.
“How do I even know this bomb exists?”
“Fair enough,” Quintz said. He led the crew to another room filled with shelves of torture devices and strange contraptions unlike anything Kinzer had ever seen before. He retrieved a chrome-colored box with a keypad and four-digit display screen in the middle. A red light lit up around the circumference of the box.
