The Gates of Winter - Mark Anthony [236]
In that moment Travis knew the answer to his question. If he loved them both, he had to leave them. Because if he didn't destroy the gate, there was no hope for them. For any of them.
Despair hardened into resolve. “The artifact of Morindu,” he said, turning toward Vani. “Do you have it?”
She handed him the onyx tetrahedron, then glanced over her shoulder. Shadows moved down the corridor.
“What are you doing, Travis?”
He removed the top of the artifact and pressed his hand against it. Blood oozed from the scratch into the reservoir within the artifact. When it was full he replaced the top.
“Hold them off as long as you can, then get out of here. If I'm right, this whole place is going to go.” He pushed the artifact into Vani's hands and met her eyes. “Promise me you'll use it. That you'll both use it.”
Vani nodded. “We promise.”
“Now, Travis.” Beltan gripped the axe in big hands. “Get out of here.”
Travis hesitated. There was so much more he wanted to say, so much more he wanted to tell them.
Silver light poured from the stairwell. Travis turned and fled down the corridor.
After fifty yards the passage turned. At the corner was a guard station with a bank of closed-circuit television screens. There were no guards in sight.
One of the screens showed a shot of the audience in the Steel Cathedral. The volume was turned down, but even if it wasn't, Travis knew no sound would have come from the TV. The audience stared, mouths open, horror written across the faces. The screen next to it showed a shot of the stage. Sage Carson stood motionless, arms spread wide in a gesture of supplication, eyes cast upward. Playing on the gigantic screen behind him was the videotape of Anna Ferraro's interview with Dr. Larsen. A pair of security guards huddled over the podium on the left side of the stage, frantically jabbing at buttons, but to no effect. Carson must have jammed it.
Travis grinned at the televisions, then he ran on.
He was halfway down the corridor when crimson lights flashed and the wail of an alarm pierced the air. At first he thought he had triggered some sensor, then an electronic voice droned out of loudspeakers in the ceilings.
“This is an emergency. Please follow the illuminated signs to the nearest exit. This is an emergency. . . .”
The Seekers had done it; they had pulled the alarms. Travis ran on. The corridor ended in a pair of double doors. He gripped the Stones in one hand and held the other hand before him.
Urath!
He didn't even speak the word. With a thought, the doors blew off their hinges and clattered to the floor. He walked over them, into the space beyond. The chamber was large and domed, like an astronomical observatory. Banks of computers lined the walls. In the center was a raised platform, and on the platform was the gate.
It was simple and beautiful—a parabola fashioned of dark metal jutting up from the platform, about twelve feet high and four feet wide. Plastic tubes wrapped around the arc of metal; clear fluid bubbled in them. With his eyes, Travis traced the tubes back. They originated in a tank at the edge of the platform.
He approached the gate, casting his gaze back and forth, the Stones gripped in his hand. He expected the darkness to explode in rage and fury at any second, but the room was empty. The computers blinked, performing unknown calculations. The red lights of the alarm played across the walls, but he heard the siren only from a distance, through the broken doors.
Where are they, Travis? Where are all the scientists?
Gone. They had finished their work; the gate was ready. All they needed was blood of power to fuel it, and they were frantically trying to synthesize it even now.
And what about the guards?
He understood that as well. They had cleared out on purpose; they had let him reach the gate. There were no doors here. They believed they had trapped him. Only there was still one way out.
Travis raised his hand. The scratch had crusted over with dried blood, but he could open it again. There was no way Duratek could know what