Chapter Seven

    Gabe’s mind snapped down hard when he heard Heather’s cry, and everything came into sharp focus. He killed his flashlight and then held his breath as he waited for the sounds of struggle or running feet, but nothing followed aside from a long, dead silence.

        He wanted to stay there for a moment and weigh his options, but his body overruled his head and started moving toward the window. It was obviously the opposite of what he should be doing, he knew, but he consoled his protesting common-sense with the idea that he’d definitely be in for a good bonus now that he was about to save the entire team. It was a pretty thin argument next to the more plausible suspicion that he was willingly walking into some kind of trap, but then he already felt like a dope for being in the murder mansion to begin with; he might as well see the game through. Add in the thought of a grateful Heather giving him a big ol’ smooch, and plunging into the terrifying darkness seemed almost downright compelling.

        Gabe reached the window and took a chance by poking his head outside to whisper for Heather. No reply came back. He reached for his phone to check the time, and then remembered that he had left it back at the warehouse. He estimated that ten or fifteen minutes had passed since they’d arrived, which gave him another ten, at best. It wouldn’t be enough to salvage the job, but it might be enough to figure out what the hell was going on.

        Gabe followed the hall a few steps farther and found that it opened up into a huge kitchen that appeared to occupy the entire east side of the lower level. Stone counter-tops and stainless steel appliances filled the room, but there was no sign of anyone having ever been there. To be sure, he turned on his flashlight again and quickly swept the room. It was completely empty.

        He was just about to turn to explore the rest of the house when he spotted a broom closet. On a whim he quietly opened the door to peek inside, and found that it actually led to a set of steeply descending spiral stairs. He suspected that it must lead to a wine cellar, and he almost abandoned it when he spotted a dark patch of something partway down the stairs. He played the dim glow of his flashlight over it and saw that it was a black canvas bag, just like the one slung over his own shoulder.

        If he was nothing else, Gabe was pragmatic. He lived his life by a set of rules carefully crafted to result in the most amount of money in his pocket with the least amount of exposure to possible death and dismemberment--this current foray into heroism notwithstanding. But near the top of his list of forbidden practices this exact scenario was written in bright red letters. He didn’t mind occasionally playing the hero when the situation wasn’t too risky--like letting an older lady go first at the supermarket. But there was absolutely nothing to be gained by exploring a dark cellar in an abandoned country mansion at night. In the history of all the stories that had ever been told, there had never been a happy outcome from someone inexplicably choosing to go down those stairs in this moment.

        Gabe hesitated and then closed the door. He had maybe five minutes left before he started pushing his luck, and he really wasn’t sure how long it might take him to hot-wire the truck—assuming Maxwell hadn’t already thought of that and taken precautions against it. The people he’d come here with meant nothing to him. There was no reason to take any crazy risks. Heather was an obvious exception, but when it came down to it he barely knew her. Almost everything he felt for her was an invention of his own overactive imagination. To her he was likely a goofy but charming acquaintance whose temporary company was preferable to solitude for the duration of this one job. After tonight they’d go back to nodding in greeting at chance encounters. He owed her nothing.

        Gabe was back at the open window in only a few seconds, then moved to pull himself through. He positioned himself, but found that he had no strength in his arms. For some reason he couldn’t quite do it. He tried again, and again failed. After another half-hearted attempt he stopped and glanced back to the kitchen, cursing silently.

        There were so many questions all of a sudden: What the hell was going on? Where had everyone gone so quickly and quietly? And why was he still left running around like an idiot? The rest of the team--and the job--had just evaporated in fifteen minutes, and now he was left holding the empty cup. How had that happened? And most importantly: why wasn’t he already sprinting across the yard instead of standing there wondering why he was alive enough to think these questions?    

        He realized with a sinking feeling that it had very little to do with Heather or being a hero. The fact was that Gabe couldn’t leave a puzzle unfinished. Part of him knew that unless this whole thing turned out to be the most elaborate prank ever, he’d always wonder what had gone wrong. Even then, in that terrible place, he really, really wanted to figure out where everybody was. It wasn’t altruism, he swore to himself, it was the need to know.

        Gabe listened hard for sirens in the distance, but didn’t hear anything obvious. It was unlikely that they’d broadcast their approach like that, but it was really all he had. Thus satisfied that he had at least a few more minutes, Gabe flicked on his flashlight and let Viktor loose.

        Sometimes, at least for Gabe, pretending to be something was as good as actually being that thing. Channeling Viktor couldn’t make him stronger or faster, but Viktor was an old, well-worn pathway in his mind, and that held a kind of magic for someone with Gabe’s particular set of otherwise benign mental issues. It was like putting on a set of armor or standing behind someone bigger. It wasn’t a second personality, per se—he wasn’t that far gone—but thus clad Gabe wasn’t really himself anymore either. He was like the tiny human pilot of a giant Viktor robot. It made him, if not braver, stupider to the point of the appearance of bravery. He could do that with any of his characters, hijacking their personalities for his own use. It was a weird talent that had allowed him to do his work without sinking completely into the roles and letting his actual personality grow jaded and bitter and useless for wearing in the real world. It was a talent his father had lacked apparently, given the kind of man he’d been, so Gabe had nurtured it over the years.

        When he reached the kitchen again he pulled a long chef’s knife from a line of them stuck magnetically to the wall. It was a strong testament to Viktor’s stupid confidence that this was done without any consideration at all for what the hell he thought he might use the blade for, since Gabe had a combat skill of precisely zero. He then wrenched open the cellar door and started smoothly down the stairs before the tiny human pilot in him could figure out that the controls weren’t actually connected to anything. Viktor was running the show now, like it or not.        

        His flashlight was small, but it still would have been quite bright in the total darkness had it not been for the thick yellow filter taped over the lens. The result was an anemic yellow glow that looked more like firelight than anything electrical, and it was far more suited for clandestine excursions than the unmodified LED would have been. Leave it to a group of burglars to think of that.

        The spiral stairs were sturdy but steep, and they went down farther than he’d anticipated. With both of his hands occupied he had to lean against the handrail to keep from tumbling down at every step. The benefit of this came when he suddenly heard a scraping noise somewhere above and he almost pitched forward onto his own knife. He managed to keep his balance, however, and he craned his neck up and around to try to get a view. Nothing came immediately down toward him, and he feared just standing there and waiting in any case, so he turned back and picked up his pace. Viktor’s stupid fearlessness had its limits.

        Several steps later, Gabe’s foot hit stone and he immediately pressed himself against the nearby wall while he panned his flashlight across the room. The dim light parted the darkness only partially, but it was enough to see a small, well-appointed wine cellar with a single door set in the back wall. He took another quick glance back up the staircase, and then, cursing himself all over again, Gabe pressed the flashlight into his shirt until only the barest hint of light shined through. Then he moved forward to pressed his ear against the door.

        He immediately heard a muffled voice within the room beyond, but it was difficult to tell if it was a woman talking or a man whimpering. After a moment he could tell that there were at least two people within. One was speaking calmly somewhere to the left, and the other was impossible to place. No light came from around the edges of the door, but the wood was poorly fitted, so that meant it had to be dark inside. There was no lock he could see, just an old latch like you might find on a fence gate.

        Gabe stepped back and shut off his light completely, then carefully sliced away the tape and removed the filtering gel so that the white LEDs were at full strength. Then, holding the flashlight in one hand and the knife at an awkward angle in his other to allow him to grip the door handle at the same time, Gabe thumbed on his light and yanked open the door.

        The first thing that hit him was the smell of death. Then he swept the light to the left, and the LEDs lit a very tall man with an arm up to shield his dark-adjusted eyes. Gabe took a step back, but just then the man flew blindly toward him with unbelievable speed, and Gabe’s single step turned into a desperate sideways scramble.

        He had decided on a whim to hold the flashlight out to the side at arm’s length, and it quickly became his only good decision of the evening. The blinded man lunged into a diving tackle right beneath Gabe’s left arm, where his center mass should have been, and though he clipped Gabe’s side, most of the force went straight into the back wall. Gabe was knocked to the right as he took the glancing blow, but he kept his feet and swept the light around as he backpedaled farther into the room—away from the man who was now struggling to get back up.

        "Stop!" Gabe yelled. "I’m armed!"

        Gabe started to open his mouth to let Viktor speak—to do what Viktor did best and threaten the hell out of this guy, but there just wasn’t any time. The man regained his feet and turned to charge again.

        Gabe knew he didn’t have many choices. He’d stupidly gotten himself into this mess, and now he was stuck finishing it. None of what he’d experienced that night had felt right, but suddenly it was all culminating into the most surreally horrible instant of his life. He was so accustomed to finding loopholes and back doors, that, even as the moment came to a close, he found himself reflexively searching for an alternative that wasn’t there

        Fortunately his body knew how clear the choice really was. It was either the knife or his life--not really a choice at all.

        The whole thing was like some kind of dream as it happened, everything moving with an eerie slowness that was conversely too fast to follow. In the moment before the impact, Gabe simply held up the knife and planted himself, and then followed along for the ride as the world became chaos in the meeting. He felt the blade sink in deep before it was wrenched violently from his hand, and then he was going down hard beneath the weight of the entire world. Pain flashed its many flavors for a moment, and then it all went away.