The Clone Assassin by Steven L. Kent

Author:Steven L. Kent
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-09-22T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

THIRTY-SEVEN

Location: Guanajuato, New Olympian Territories

Date: July 30, 2519

When he shined a light instead of using the night-for-day vision in his goggles, the walls of the mine were mostly tan and yellow, approximately the same the color of sawdust. Little clusters of crystals sparkled from the rock. Rough-hewn, with rounded ceilings, a thin skin of dirt and dust on the ground, stairs carved out of the same rock that formed the walls, shafts that dropped straight down to unseen depths, and darkness—seeing his surroundings, Freeman knew that fear would paralyze him if he let his thoughts wander, so he tightened his grip on his thoughts.

Some parts of the mine looked a thousand years old, crumbling knee-high offshoots that Freeman couldn’t possibly have entered even if he stripped off his clothes and slathered himself with grease. Some of the newer tributaries looked wide enough and strong enough to accommodate a tank.

The main hub of the mine was as wide and as tall as a gymnasium, with walls that shot twenty feet straight up. In one corner, shrouded in dust and cobwebs, sat an abandoned office, its door hanging open, its picture-window walls so covered in dust that they were the same color as the ground below them. A skein of cables and wires ran from the top of the office and disappeared into a pipe that had been driven into the ceiling.

Freeman harbored no doubts that men had died here, maybe even hundreds of them. He suspected that a thousand workers had watched their minds erode as they spent day after day trapped in the darkness and claustrophobia. He would not allow himself to become the mine’s latest victim.

Not far from the office, Freeman found racks of ancient equipment, and farther still, an enormous generator. The machinery was a snarl of pipes and motors, seven feet tall and twenty feet long, and covered in dust. Exhaust pipes as straight and thick as Grecian columns rose from the heart of the contraption and vanished into the ceiling.

He placed a sensor under the large cylinder, which must have held fuel sometime in the past. The sensor noted motion and lumen fluctuation; it also included a chip that recorded and analyzed audio and intercepted radio signals.

Freeman reached an arm through a gap in the machinery. He placed a remote charge against the side of a heavy motor. Walking around the generator, he placed two more charges deep inside the tangle of pipes and wires. The generator might have weighed six tons, it might have weighed eight; Freeman hoped the force of his charges would ricochet against the solid rock wall, launching the generator across the chamber. Depending on the condition of the structure, it might even blow the generator apart, sending pipes and bolts and fragments of ancient metal through the air like shrapnel.

The charges might bring down the house, but Freeman doubted it. The walls and ceiling were solid.

Freeman moved on. His goggles let him see through the darkness, but they did nothing more.

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