“A tunnel, long and tubular. It would have to be tubular to properly use electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. The very definition of a supercollider. It would use oscillating field accelerators to generate radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to achieve the particle acceleration.”
“If we can’t see it now,” Alex picked up, when Donati seemed to run out of breath, “it’s got to be beneath us.”
Almost on cue, a steel spiral staircase that looked like a massive drill bit forging deep into the bowels of the Earth appeared before him. Alex never hesitated. Still holding Sam’s hand tight, he started toward it, forgetting all about the invisible safety line the chip in his head formed around the four of them.
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Dancer,” Raiff said, holding his ground. “At least let me—”
A shrill, piercing alarm swallowed the rest of his words.
“Raiff!” Alex yelled to him, realizing he and Sam had strayed a dozen feet ahead, clearly too much separation to continue projecting a protective shroud over them.
“Keep going!” Raiff shouted. “Go!”
Alex yanked Sam on toward the exposed stairwell, her eyes having trouble breaking their hold on Donati’s.
“Move!” Raiff wailed. “Don’t stop!”
And they hurtled toward the stairwell drilled down farther than the eye could see, while Raiff swung toward the cyborg guards converging on him.
104
DESCENDING SPIRAL
“DON’T LOOK BACK!” ALEX yelled over the incessant wail to Sam. “And don’t leave me!”
“Don’t worry!”
She clung to him, not about to let go. The stairwell spiraling downward was closer to them than it had seemed. They stepped onto the platform at its top, even with the floor of the catwalk, together.
And then the stairwell started to move.
At first, Sam thought it was an illusion, then she realized, no, this was really happening. The stairwell was indeed churning, picking up speed on a descending spiral that pushed the air past them in gushes.
“Close your eyes!” Alex ordered, hugging her tight against him.
The spiraling descent continued, everything around them visible only as a whirling blur. Sam opened her eyes. She’d always imagined she could see the miniscule particles that made up air rippling before her and that’s what this felt like now, as if she were watching the air itself swirl around them.
She was still hugging Alex when the swirling seemed to slow, an entirely new phenomenon starting to sharpen around them. She recalled Donati’s and the professor’s descriptions of the particle accelerator they’d constructed at Laboratory Z and realized she was looking at what could only be a far more sophisticated and technologically advanced version of that.
Enabling the wormhole that would open again from the other side. A cylindrical, tubular channel of black steel interlaced with thick glass panels, fifteen feet or so in height and wide enough for a car to pass through. It reminded Sam of the Chunnel, which ran beneath the English Channel connecting Britain and France. If she remembered her lessons correctly, once activated a particle accelerator of this size and magnitude would generate power on a millisecond level equal to that of the grid powering an entire city or even state.
“Oh, shit,” she heard Alex say, figuring he was seeing the same thing she was.
Until her vision cleared, settling on a shape standing before them that wasn’t totally there.
“Hello again, Alex,” said the ash man.
*
Raiff felt the handle of his stick weapon heating up and thought it into its whip form as the first wave of cyborgs descended upon him and Donati. Keeping the NASA scientist close behind him on the catwalk, Raiff lashed the whip out, up and down, side to side, slicing through everything in its path. The air filled with a baked-rubber-and-hot-steel scent, mixed with the corrosive odor of burned wiring. Residue of what his cuts with the whip-like weapon had left in its path: broken machines collapsing in heaps to the ground.
Raiff continued retracing their steps back to the elevator, a junkyard left in his wake. The first wave of androids weren’t equipped with weapons but the second wave, reinforcements surging up from the levels below, carried plasma rifles every bit the equal of his whip and capable of working at much greater distances. Up close, along the narrow width and close confines of the catwalk, which forced the cyborgs into a virtual single-file attack, Raiff’s whip proved enough to hold them at bay all the way back to the elevator.
Raiff shoved Donati into the open cab ahead of him and pressed the “up” arrow. The door slid closed just ahead of the cyborgs opening fire, their plasma rounds boring effortlessly through the elevator’s old-fashioned heavy steel door as the cab shook into hydraulic motion.
“Are we supposed to outrun them?” Donati managed to say between gasps.
“I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Raiff told him.
“What about—”
“He’ll be fine. The girl too.”
“You can’t know that.”
Raiff’s stare bore into Donati’s. “Yes, I can.”
The elevator trembled to a halt, squealed into place. The door slid open.
“Don’t goddamn move!” ordered Rathman.