I paused at the door, just out of sight of where V lay sleeping. There. The same noise I’d heard earlier, like the sound of an animal moving in the darkness. It was a risk, but I reached out with my senses to see if I could figure out where the noise was coming from.
The piles of debris made it challenging. I couldn’t actually see much. I didn’t want to announce my presence by using the flashlight, but I needed to do something. The subbasement was obviously used for storage at one time.
I finally made it back all the way to the stairway we’d descended. My alarms were still in place. I figured the noise must have been some kind of animal. I decided it was safe enough to use the flashlight.
I turned to return the way I came and flicked on the light. There, at the end of the hall a pair of silver eyes reflected back at me.
Those eyes stared at me in shock for a moment before suddenly turning and bolting down the hall. I could barely make out a human-sized shape in the dim light
“Shit!” I swore before taking off running after the intruder. Somehow he had gotten behind me, between me and V.
The light cast crazy shadows as I ran, my feet pumping to catch up with the man. If he was a Mageian, he wasn’t anyone I knew. I’d never seen eyes like that before. They had appeared almost like those of an animal.
I raced after him until we reached a corridor V and I had passed on the way down here. There was an open door at the end that had been some kind of janitorial closet. We had checked to make sure there were no other doors in that direction when we passed.
Gotcha! I thought. It was a dead end. I could see him in the distance and slowed my pace slightly, getting ready to throw an Air shield over him. There was nowhere for him to go. I had just created the shield to imprison him when he turned--and leaped through the wall, disappearing from sight.
“What the fuck?” I said, approaching the area where he had stood. There were no doors, we’d checked. Where the hell had he gone?
I flashed the light around the hall, which was filled with stacks of boxes and files. I turned away from the janitors closet in confusion when the light caught on something to my right, the direction the person had disappeared. Buried behind theboxes and other trash I saw a large, square opening towards the ground. I knelt cautiously, shining the flashlight into the opening and felt a breath of air brush my face. It was a ventilation duct.
It made sense since we were pretty far underground. They would have had to have some way of keeping the air flowing down here.
I stood in disgust. No way in hell was I chasing someone through a fucking ventilation duct. Whoever he was, he obviously knew this area better than I did.
I took the shield I had intended to use to imprison the man and placed it over the ventilation opening, then added an Air alarm across it for good measure. Let the fucker try and get through that.
I headed back to where V and I had camped, relieved to see him undisturbed. Unwilling to be caught by surprise again, I closed the door to the hall and blocked it with a large desk that sat at the end of the room.
When I turned to move back to my brother I almost tripped over sa small package on the ground by the door. Tattered remnants of material lay around, and I almost hadn’t noticed it. I stepped around it cautiously. I could almost swear it hadn’t been here when we had come through earlier.
I checked the room, but didn’t see any more ducts that were large enough for a man to crawl through. The one in the hallway had been exceptionally large. I suspected it had served as one of the primary air sources for the basements.
I glanced at my brother but V was still sleeping. He’d dropped off to sleep almost instantly, a talent of his I’d envied for a long time. I settled down near him, trying to calm my racing heart, no longer worried about falling asleep.
I picked up the package after testing cautiously for explosives or traps. At first glance I thought it was just paper, butthen realized it was wrapping something. I opened it and was surprised to find a book. A book of poetry.
Printed words were heavily monitored in Alexandria. The King used his stranglehold on knowledge to control the masses.
I opened the book and realized it was a book of poetry, and I sighed. V must have found it while we traveled. My brother adored books, and I couldn’t help a surge of affection for him. In sleep his face lost some of the reserve he had developed since joining the Legion. I remembered how he had looked as a kid, running around after Erix and me.
He had only been a couple years younger than my twin and I, but we’d seen him often. As children, we had attended the same school, been trained in court etiquette, politics, history, and other topics, just in case we ended up developing Elusian powers, making us eligible to be named full heirs.
Vlakas had always been a quiet kid. Extremely smart, but also kind and empathetic. He read anything he could get his hands on, but he especially loved history. He had loved learning, and I had thought he would make a great King someday. Until he developed Mageia powers.
I still wasn’t sure why he had developed his powers so late in life. I’d never heard of a kid developing after fifteen.
I settled into a light trance so I could keep aware of any activity in the area without falling asleep. Fortunately the rest of the night was quiet.
I woke V for his watch, warning him of our unknown visitor before finally trying to rest. For what seemed like hours, those silver eyes seemed to bore through my memory, but eventually sleep claimed me.
Chapter 12
Kat
Vlakas and I moved through the water in the tunnels in almost total darkness. The batteries on the flashlights had given out the day before, and we didn’t dare make torches that would announce our presence to any predators, two footed or four.
I had placed a silencing bubble around us so that at least no one would hear us bumbling around in the dark.
