The metal rattles and moans, but the hinges hold.
“Heads down,” Dante warns before an even more powerful burst of air whooshes back out and past us. The hinges bend under the force, the metal squealing as it slowly gives up the struggle. After a few seconds of Dante’s reverse tornado, the grate flies off, narrowly missing Nitro’s head.
“Oi! Watch it!” he yells.
“I told you to stay down,” Dante answers.
“Let’s go,” Draven says, jumping to his feet.
He’s the first one into the tunnel—no surprise there. “Watch your step. It’s slippery in here.”
Slippery? I exchange a look of trepidation with Rebel. I don’t even want to know what’s inside the tunnel that makes it slippery. When Jeremy told us that he suspected there had to be hidden access points in these field, far enough out that no one would suspect their association with the lab, he’d been very vague about what kind of tunnels they might lead to. I have a feeling we wouldn’t have wanted to know anyway.
I enter the tunnel behind Draven and Dante, and my foot sinks four or five inches into sludge. Gross. Never have I been so grateful that Rebel made me borrow a pair of her Doc Martens.
“Eeeew!” Rebel screeches, her voice echoing through the tunnel and almost—almost—drowning out the disgusting sucking sound our feet make as we plow forward through the muck. I’m kind of glad it’s dark so I can’t see what we’re walking in.
“Damn,” Nitro says. “Is this stuff radioactive?”
Rebel reaches around and smacks him on the shoulder. “Why would you even say that?” Then she starts trying to walk a lot more softly than she was just a minute ago. “It’s not, is it, Kenna? We aren’t going to turn green, are we?”
“Does it matter?” Draven demands, picking up his pace so that he’s all but running. “We’re not turning back.”
I lean close to Rebel and whisper reassuringly, “It would be glowing if it was.”
Dante takes off after Draven and we try to keep up, but it’s hard. I feel like I’m running through quicksand and the further we get, the deeper the sludge. Jeremy is struggling more than the rest of us. Probably because he’s been up for forty-two hours straight, hacking into the security program so he could disable systems as needed.
And maybe because he’s got eighty pounds of extra gear in his backpack.
Fifteen minutes of running, trudging, falling through sludge, and we’re all gasping for air and covered in muck. But we’ve reached the entrance—a round, metal door three feet off the ground that looks barely big enough for me, let alone the guys, to crawl through.
Draven stops before touching anything, waiting for Jeremy to catch up. He and Nitro have fallen so many times that they’re a good two minutes back.
“This one wired too?” Draven asks when Jeremy arrives, scooching by Rebel and me.
He waves one of his gadgets over the door and the thing goes nuts. “These aren’t standard security sensors.”
“What does that mean?” Nitro asks.
“Must be part of the new security,” Jeremy says, reaching into his backpack for a pen. He throws it at the door and when it hits, an electromagnetic wave pulses, knocking us into the disgusting sludge. I swear to God, if we get out of this alive, I’m going to kill my ex-boyfriend.
“A little warning next time, asshole,” Dante says bitterly as he climbs to his feet. He reaches down to help Rebel up, and Draven gives me a hand.
“Sorry.” Jeremy’s already rummaging through his backpack. “I didn’t realize it would be that powerful.”
“How are we going to get through it?” I demand. Staring at that door, knowing we’re so close, I’ve never felt more desperate. Or more powerless.
Jeremy doesn’t answer, just pulls out another gadget, waves it at the door, and frowns. Another gadget. Another frown. Another gadget…
The wait is killing me.
I inch closer to the door, my whole body tense. The closer I get, the stranger I feel. There’s a weird tingling under my skin. I’ve never felt like this before, and I can’t help wondering if Rebel’s right and this sludge we’re standing in really is radioactive.
“Can’t you just”—I wave my hands at him in a vague, you’re-a-superhero, use-your-powers gesture—“take care of it?”
He scowls at me. “Only if I want the equivalent force of twenty nuclear bombs coursing through my body.”
“Would it deactivate the security before it killed you?” Draven asks hopefully.
Jeremy ignores him, pressing the button on his latest gadget, but nothing happens. Or at least, it doesn’t look like anything is happening.
We all wait tensely, and after a minute Jeremy says, “Huh. That’s strange.”
“What’s strange?” Dante demands, his voice stretched taut as a circus high wire.
“It’s not picking up any more electromagnetic activity.” He shakes the gizmo, aims it again. No lights, no beeps, nothing.
“Did you break it?” Draven demands.