HOPELESS

The jump station delivered them beneath the shadows of a massive building surrounded by a thick wall of trees. The air was crisp, and the stars were already shining overhead.

“Why do I feel like I was jammed through a strainer and then put back together?” Ernie said.

“I don’t know, but you need to get that IPA working before someone sees us,” Harley said, spotting a camera overhead. “I’d feel a lot better if we were ghosts.”

Ernie fumbled with the controls of the IPA as a large truck rumbled down the drive toward where they were hiding.

“Let’s go,” Harley said through gritted teeth.

“I’m trying,” Ernie said as the IPA slipped from his hand. Somehow he managed to catch it before it hit the ground. He looked up to see the truck’s lights were shining on him. Ernie entered his code, and there was a strange humming sound. A moment later, they disappeared as the truck rolled by.

Raven placed her hand on the wall of the building before closing her eyes. “This is definitely where they landed,” she said. Then she squinted, as though straining to hear a voice from far away. “There should be a sewer grate in the back of the building. That’s how they got in.”

Max had Raven lead the way. Despite the IPA, they kept to the shadows as best they could, dodging behind bushes and running when there was no cover. It wasn’t long before they found the grate.

“It doesn’t smell like a sewer,” Harley said.

“Let’s hope that’s a good sign,” Max said, grabbing hold of the iron bars to remove the grate. He lowered himself into the darkness, and the others followed.

The chute dropped them into a narrow passage that was, fortunately, not a sewer. They made good time as they passed into an elevated corridor that led them down another hatch. Clockwork drones were everywhere, scanning the passageways as they looked for intruders.

“I know those things can’t see us, but they still freak me out,” Ernie said.

“Me too,” Max said, patting him on the back. “Let’s hurry up and get this over with.”

They climbed down a ladder, passed through a maintenance corridor, and entered a hangar filled with helicopters, winged clockworks, and mobile artillery.

Men in grey uniforms inspected the vehicles while Assembler clockworks welded, torched, and upgraded what looked like Dreadnaughts. Covered in thick armor, the massive clockwork war machines were nearly twenty feet tall, with wide chests and small heads. Some had rocket launchers attached to their arms, while others were equipped with Gatling guns fixed to their shoulders. They all looked deadly.

“What if Hale is stuffed inside one of those?” Ernie asked.

“We need to find Logan first,” Max said.

“He’s right,” Natalia said. “But if we can, we’ll come back and check, right, Max?”

Max nodded as Raven knelt to place her hand on the ground. “The THOR agents passed through here, and they hadn’t been spotted yet,” she said.

They pressed on, passing through another hatchway and then around a corner before they entered the heart of the facility. It was nearly as wide as a football field, with intersecting bridges crossing a chasm so deep they couldn’t see the bottom. The room hummed with the roar of invisible steam engines and titanic gears as clockwork soldiers patrolled the bridges in squads of ten.

“We need to go that way,” Raven said, pointing to a door on the far side of the chamber. It was several flights down, and the stairs didn’t have rails.

“Let’s move,” Max said.

They kept to the center of the bridge as best they could. More than once they had to phase through squads of marching clockworks. Everyone managed to make it down all three flights of stairs without spilling over the edge, but as they crossed the last bridge, they heard what sounded like angry bees following them.

“What are those?” Natalia asked.

Five iron spheres with mechanical arms and lighted eyes had risen from the depths below the bridges. Streams of blue swept across the ground as they closed in.

“They look like my probes on steroids,” Harley said, “and they’re probably looking for us.”

“It doesn’t matter, right?” Ernie said. “We’re ghosts.”

“What do you think?” Harley asked, turning to Max.

“Let’s not push it.”

“Agreed.”

They raced for the hatchway as the probes closed in. The door was shut, but with their IPA, it didn’t matter. Max leaped as the first drone was about to overtake them. He phased through the hatch and into the darkness, hoping the others would follow.

Once his eyes adjusted, Max could see that he was in a narrow passage that looked like it had been bombed, bulldozed, and then bombed again.

The others spilled in, and if it hadn’t been for the IPA, they wouldn’t have been able to make it through the thicket of smoldering pipe works or the snapping plasma conduits.

“They were overwhelmed,” Raven said after taking her hand from the wall.

“What about Logan?” Max asked. Through the darkness, he could see the fallen forms of THOR agents amid the rubble.

“He made it out, but he was one of the few.”

“We better keep moving.” Max was relieved that Logan was still alive, but he had to push thoughts of the fallen THOR agents out of his mind. It was overwhelming, but they had to keep moving.

Raven led them to an abyss that was impossible to cross. “It’s an elevator shaft,” she explained. “The clockworks blew it up.”

“The THOR agents were trapped,” Max said.

Raven nodded.

“Look at this,” Harley said. He was kneeling beside the remains of a clockwork with rocket launchers on its shoulders. It had a hole punched through its chest, and its innards had melted into slag. Behind the machine was a hidden air shaft.

“Two men went through here,” Raven said. She looked at Max. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Why?”

“It’s just that…” Raven’s voice faltered. “I have a bad feeling, that’s all.”

“Is there something you’re not telling us?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go.” Max was the first to disappear into the small passage. The air shaft twisted like a roller coaster at an amusement park. He held his arms against his sides and pointed his feet forward. At one point, Max was going so fast around a turn that he ended up riding along the top of the tubing.

He could hear the others screaming behind him. Then, just when Max wondered if the ride was going to end, his feet pounded against a grate that shot through the air, ricocheting off the wall and then hitting the floor.

“Whoa!” Max shouted as he hurtled through the air. He braced for impact against the wall, but his shoulder phased right through. Max ended up in some kind of storage facility with metal shelves filled with neatly stacked bins.

Moments later Harley landed on top of him, and the others weren’t far behind.

“Where are we?” Natalia asked.

“In the wrong place,” Max said before walking back through the wall and into the hallway, where he saw the sunglasses lying on the floor.

“Are those Logan’s?” Harley asked.

Max walked over to pick them up. The lenses were shattered and the frame bent. Max stopped breathing.

“Nice of you to drop in.”