She decided to finish her search, and if the hospital did not reveal any sign of Manifold’s presence, she would next see if the thing had left a trail, perhaps blood spatter from its wounds. If the thing was a Manifold creation, it might lead her back to the place it had spawned.
She recovered her flashlight and continued her search, descending to the first floor, the basement and then the sub-basement. Pitch black and silent as a crypt, this level was a warren of mechanical rooms, their doors standing open or hanging loosely from rusted hinges. Fallen cables snaked across the dusty floor. Crumbling concrete pillars looked like they might give way at any moment. Deep Blue, if this place comes down on top of me, I’m going to climb out of here and kick your ass.
She made a thorough search, looking for a door, hidden or otherwise, that might lead to a secret Manifold base of operations, but she found nothing. On the positive side, nothing came leaping out of the darkness at her. Score one for the good guys, or girls, as it were. Only one door remained unchecked. This one, unlike the others, was closed. Holding her Mark 23 at the ready, she grasped the handle, turned it slowly, and yanked the door open.
The shrill scream practically made her hair stand on end, so high was the pitch, but she knew instantly that there was no threat here. A dark-haired teenage girl cowered on the floor. She lay on her side, her knees drawn up tight to her chest and her hands covering her face. Her jeans and t-shirt were coated in dust, and she trembled from head to toe, but she appeared otherwise unharmed.
“It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you.” Queen didn’t bother to keep the annoyance from her voice. She hadn’t come on a rescue mission and she sure as hell wasn’t here to babysit.
The girl continued to quake, crying softly into her hands, which she still held pressed to her face. Queen knelt and put a hand on her shoulder. She tried to speak to the girl in soothing tones, but it was futile. Cursing her ill luck, Queen hauled the girl to her feet, yanked her hands away, and gave her a sharp slap on the cheek—just enough to get her attention. The girl gasped and looked at her in surprise.
“You are not,” she began in a quavering voice, “one of those things?” So, she not only spoke English, but had enough presence of mind to register that was the language Queen had been speaking. Queen turned the flashlight toward her own face. The girl’s frozen features sagged in relief, and she fell into Queen’s arms. “Thank you for rescuing for me.” She stayed there for a long, dragging moment, and then her head popped up and she frowned. “But how did you know where I was? We didn’t tell anyone where we were going.”
“Sorry, but I didn’t come for you,” Queen said. “It’s just dumb luck that I found you. And nobody’s been rescued yet. That thing is still out there.”
As though to punctuate the point, loud footsteps thumped past on the floor above. The creature was still hunting them, despite its recent injuries.
Queen bit her lip. What was she going to do with this girl? She could shove her back into the closet and come back for her later, but what if the beast found her? It had hands, so she assumed it could open a door with ease. One problem on top of another. “You have a name?”
“My name is Armina. My friends and I were recording our web-show when…” She shuddered, her words driven away by the memory of whatever had happened to them. “Did you find Alexei and Oleg?”
“No.” Queen figured the dead body was one of the two, but this didn’t seem the time to tell her new charge that. “How long have you been hiding down here?”
“I don’t know. A few hours, maybe. It is so dark down here, and I am so afraid.” Armina folded her arms and gave herself a squeeze, as if she could hug the fear out.
Queen looked at the girl’s shaking arms and knew she needed to get the girl settled before asking her the hard questions.
“You said you were doing a web-show?” Queen asked, feigning interest.
Armina nodded and wiped her arm across her nose. “It was supposed to be our first full length episode. We were looking for ghosts, but didn’t think we’d get anything more than some sounds made by the wind, or shadows shifting from moving trees. We didn’t think—we didn’t know…”
“There was no way you could have known,” Queen said. She could see the survivor’s guilt kicking in. If the girl went down that dark road, there might not be any recovering. “How old are you, Armina?”
“Sixteen.”
“And the boys?” Queen asked.
“Seventeen.Both of them.”
Queen saw a familiar hardness in the girl’s eyes. “Why were you really out here?”
“I told you already,” Armina said, a tinge of anger seeping in. “We weren’t doing drugs or fooling around.”
Queen held up her hands. “That’s not what I meant.”
Armina looked confused.
“I meant, who are you escaping from? Even if you didn’t know those…things were here, Pripyat isn’t exactly a safe place to visit. Not only could there be gangs hiding out in the abandoned buildings but there are still radiation hotspots.”