“What about Cass?” Cadence asked.
“What do you want me to do? Take her or leave her?” Elliott asked.
“Leave her with Jamie, Cale, and Scarlet,” Aaron replied before Cadence could even formulate a sentence. Then, just to Cadence he said, “I want her with the Healers just in case something should happen.”
“Okay,” Cadence nodded. Brandon was assigned to a group that would be actively looking for Gibbon, so he wouldn’t be around to keep Cass safe. Still, she had to trust all of her teammates, and Cadence felt confident that both Jamie and Cale could keep her sister from getting hurt.
Once everyone else was in position, Cadence and Aaron would approach the Klondike, hoping that Gibbon would simply be sitting in there waiting on them. Of course, she had a feeling it wouldn’t be that simple. Nothing ever was.
“Hey boss man,” Elliott said again, “I thought we believed there wouldn’t be any people here.”
“That’s what we were told,” Aaron replied. “What are you seeing?”
“Uh, well, it looks like we’ve got a security guard walking between the greenhouse buildings carrying a flashlight.”
“Great,” Aaron muttered under his breath. A few seconds later, said security guard came around the corner, only a few yards from Cadence and Aaron’s position.
“What do we do?” Cadence whispered.
“Nothing. If we stay low, he won’t see us. Christian, you’re sure there’s no alarms anywhere activated in any of the buildings, right?”
“Yes, I’m sure,” Christian replied. He was also stationed in the main building, in the entryway. “I did a scan just a few minutes ago. I deactivated the simple alarm they had in place, and nothing is reading now. So if the guard has noticed it’s off, he hasn’t reset it.”
“Maybe this guy is a new addition since there’s been so many disappearances in the area,” Andrew chimed in, and Cadence felt Aaron tense up next to her.
“That’s a possibility,” she offered. The guard was still coming their way, and she realized they needed to move. They weren’t far from the Klondike; they just needed to get there and get inside before this guy noticed, or else he might end up having to be put out of commission for a while.
“If Gibbon is here, won’t he be after that guy?” Cassidy asked over the IAC to only Cadence.
“Not necessarily,” Cadence replied as she and Aaron lost themselves in the shadow of the main building. She could see the opening to the Klondike just in front of them. “Gibbon may not realize there’s anyone here. Or he may be hiding from us.”
Her sister asked another question, but Cadence couldn’t concentrate on that and what Aaron was gesturing for her to do at the same time, so she ignored Cassidy, thinking it probably wasn’t important anyway. There was a grate that needed to be moved, and following his lead, she hoisted one side up as he got the other. Then they leaned it against the building.
There was a long stairwell that disappeared into nothingness. She looked at Aaron and made an X with her fingers. Understanding that she was asking about his X-ray vision, he looked down the stairwell and then shrugged and shook his head. So he couldn’t really see anything from here. If they wanted to know if Gibbon was down there, they’d have to go look.
Aaron drew his weapon and began to make his way down the staircase. Cadence took the revolver out of her waistband and followed just behind him. The smell of dampness and mildew down here was overwhelming, and once they reached the bottom, Cadence could see that this place wasn’t exactly what she was expecting. The small walkway was full of pipes and other infrastructural support pieces, and navigating around them was not easy.
“No wonder they put a grate over the opening,” she muttered.
“They still let people down here, though,” he reminded her as they approached a heavy wooden door.
Aaron stopped on one side and gestured for her to go to the other, which she did. So this must be the Klondike, she thought. He gave her two short nods and then a long one, indicating a count to three and then burst through the door, which would have opened whether it was locked or not, and Cadence followed.
As soon as she stepped into the room, two things were evident. First of all, despite the pitch blackness surrounding her, Gibbon was most certainly not here. Secondly, the overwhelming stench of death hit her full in the face, and had she been human, she definitely would have retched all over the cold concrete floor.
“Holy hell,” Aaron mumbled, shoving his revolver back into its holster and stepping over to a pile of bodies deeper than Cadence had ever seen or imagined she might see. “I guess we’ve got more than twelve victims here.”
“Yeah. Looks more like… twenty.”
“I don’t think there’s any sense checking for pulses,” he continued, stepping back away from them himself. “Anyone who's been down here with this for more than a few hours is probably expired.”
“We can come back and do a recovery later,” Cadence nodded. While she hated to think of anyone lying down here in this hell, at least now, perhaps, some of the families would have some closure. It was difficult to identify anyone for sure considering how the bodies had been tossed aside on top of one another, but Cadence saw the head of a woman who appeared to be in her early thirties, her hair pulled into a messy bun. That could be the school teacher. She also saw a pair of Kicks sticking out from the bottom of the pile, which might belong to one of the teenagers, and a hand with bright pink nail polish. The remains of a broken camera littered the ground nearby.
“Boss man, sorry to break up your macabre party down there, but we’ve got a problem,” Elliott called.
“What is it?” Aaron asked, backing away from the bodies.
“Paul Blart is headed through the front door, right toward Christian’s team.”
“Affirmative,” Aaron replied. “We’re on our way up. Christian, be careful, but do what you need to do.”
