Free False Sight by Dan Krokos Page B

fear, the darker kind that comes when you don’t understand.
Two seconds later, their footsteps start after me.
We walk for ten minutes, and the light gets brighter and brighter.
“Be ready,” Rhys whispers beside me. I hear Peter pull the hammer back on his revolver.
We spread out over the last fifty feet, then leave the tunnel behind for a huge underground chamber.
Huge doesn’t begin to describe it. Think stadium-size, complete with an enormous dome roof you can’t see with just one glance. Lights dot the ceiling in a grid pattern too bright to look at. Tunnels like the one we came through are built around the circumference, right into the rock, like the tunnels people use to get to their seats in a stadium. Only triple the amount. At first glance, there seems to be a hundred, some of them stacked three high, a grid of openings that now remind me less of stadium tunnels and more of drawers in a morgue.
Each tunnel has a label that sends a chill from the base of my spine to the top of my head. They say things like ChiCago
and los angeles and aUstin and tampa and miami and bUffalo
and Cheyenne and seattle .
    Cities. All the cities in America I could name, and some I couldn’t, like twin falls .
None of this is the weird part.
In the center of the cavern is a flat black circle the size of a small lake. I walk toward it slowly. The black surface reflects no light, so I can’t tell what it is. It seems to be something , not a hole in the ground. But not liquid, either. Just... black .
I step closer.
“Let me go first,” Peter says behind me.
My mind shows me Noah charging into the darkness of the lab. I am done letting anyone else go first. “No, wait.”
My eyes go to the tunnels again. So many paths, all stemming from this central hub like spokes on a wheel. I slide Beacon onto my back, feel the click as it adheres to my armor, but keep the silver revolver in my grasp.
“Anyone have a good feeling about this?” Rhys says.
It’s so quiet I can hear the blood in my ears. I can’t take my eyes off the lake. I am staring into the abyss, literally. Instinct is screaming at me to run, but I press on. Noah would have, and I’m sure Nina did.
I approach the lake slowly, waiting for a change or a ripple, a reflection, but it doesn’t alter. Soon I’m kneeling at the edge. My eyes begin to ache, but I don’t look away.
“What are you doing?” Peter says. He grabs my arm, but I reach forward with the other one and touch the black.
Nothing happens. My hand disappears to the wrist, but I feel nothing, literally nothing, like my hand has been discon- nected. The black isn’t a liquid; it’s not anything. I pull my handout andfeeling returns as I do, first mywrist,then palm, then fingers, then fingertips.
“Not a dead end,” Rhys says. He’s staring into the lake with unfocused eyes, like it has him caught in a trance.
“Might as well be,” Peter says. “It’s not like we’re going to jumpin.”He pullsmeup andI lethim,thinking, We ’ re probably going to jump in, and you know that. We came all this way. He grabs my hand and inspects it—the armor is fine. The smaller scales on my fingers are intact and flawless.
Rhys kneels for a closer look. “We can’t make it back on foot. No food or water.”
“Are there any carts in the tunnels?” Peter says, casting his gaze over the floor-level openings. Some of the tunnel entrances are lit and smooth and feel finished, while some are shadowed and craggy, like open mouths waiting to chew us up.
“It would take hours to search each one,” I say, flexing my hand. It felt odd in the black, but not wrong. Just...missing. “This is our path. Nina came here, I know it.”
“You can’t be sure,” Rhys says.
“Nina was supposed to gather something called the eyeless,” I go on, ignoring him. “Sequel told me. If Nina came here, I don’t see where else she could go.”
“Down one of the tunnels, maybe,” Peter says. “You’re jumping to