Free The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) by Thomas E. Sniegoski

touched. Something passed between them, but before he could figure out exactly what it was, Emily looked away, dragging a box of files toward her.
    “Unngh!” she grunted, looking at a piece of paper from one of the heavy folders inside. “Here’s another one that’s incomplete.” She tossed it onto the growing stack that threatened to fall to one side. “Sent to archives,” she mumbled. “Every folder I look at—sent to archives.”
    Bram plucked the folder off the top of the stack and looked for himself. “I noticed that too.” He looked around the room.
    Douglas St. Laurent emerged from another aisle. “Most of the files I’ve been looking at say the same thing about the archives.”
    Bram stood up. “Hey, Stitch?” he called out, his voice echoing in the room.
    The large, pale-skinned man emerged from another aisle, folder in hand. “Yes?”
    “Sent to archives,” Bram said, holding up a file. “The message is in almost every file we’ve looked at.”
    Stitch nodded, coming toward them. “I noticed, yes. Obviously they didn’t trust the more sensitive information to these folders and sent it elsewhere.”
    “Any idea where that could be?” Bram asked.
    “I’m not really sure,” Stitch said. “A piece of me seems to recall a structure built beneath the salt flats of—”
    The sudden noise was nearly deafening, and Bram felt his body immediately react, preparing for battle.
    At the far end of the vast room they could see that a section of shelving had tumbled down, sending boxes and file cabinets flying, spilling documents everywhere. They headed for the sudden chaos and found Bogey emerging from beneath one of the shelving units.
    “The shelves seemed sturdier than that,” the Mauthe Dhoog said, not seeming at all concerned about the mess he’d made.
    “What happened?” Bram asked.
    “Thought I could see something behind this wall of shelves,” Bogey said, “and I was right.”
    The little creature pointed to the wall—and a door marked with a gold plaque that read ARCHIVES .
    “Is this what you were looking for?”
    Bogey kicked some of the boxes aside to reach the door.
    “Kind of stupid to hide another whole room behind a wall of shelves,” Bogey said, grabbing hold of the doorknob.
    There was a brilliant flash and a squeal from Bogey as he was violently tossed across the room. The Mauthe Dhoog would have most assuredly been bounced offanother section of shelves if not for Dez’s quick thinking. The boy used his telekinetic powers to catch the flying Bogey before any harm could be done.
    “Good catch, Dez,” Bram said, before turning his attention to Bogey. “Are you all right?”
    Bogey appeared stunned, shaking the hand that had made contact with the knob. “Yeah, I’m fine, except for the part where my insides feel as though they’ve been hit by a bazillion bolts of electricity.”
    “That’s a lot of electricity,” Emily said as she folded her arms, eyeing the archives’ door. “Something tells me we don’t want to touch that doorknob again.”
    Bram approached the door. “Bogey wondered why the door was hidden behind the shelves and file cabinets,” he thought aloud. “Stitch said that the information sent to archives was … sensitive.”
    He studied the door. It appeared to be just an ordinary door, but this was the Brimstone Network base of operations and nothing was ordinary here.
    “This building was attacked,” Bram stated, turning from the door to look at his team. “And if there was sensitive information stored down here, there must have been security measures in place to protect it.”
    He turned back to the door, gazing at the knob.
    “Maybe the room reacted to the attack and hid the archives door.”
    Bram reached for the gold-colored knob.
    “Don’t do it,” Bogey screamed.
    Bram ignored the Mauthe Dhoog’s words, gripping the knob while bracing himself for the worst. But the knob turned without any flash of powerful magick, and he pushed