Witch Hunter Robin Fan Fiction ❯ Binah (Understanding) ❯ Where Angels Fear to Tread ( Chapter 21 )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

was as though Amon had forgotten something, but couldn't remember what. The memory evaded him, like something lost under a piece of heavy furniture, and each time his questing mental fingers brushed it, they also pushed it a degree further away. There was a sense of incompleteness. Rationally, he knew what it might be. But that didn't mean he had any desire to face it. Sleep, he figured, would cure the problem. So he crawled into bed and slept.

The nagging sensation of loss assailed him even in sleep, however. It felt like that moment of classic teenage nightmare horror—reality proceeded along normally, until he arrived at classes, only to discover he was completely naked. Only it wasn't his class waiting in the room, only Robin, and she wasn't a passive observer, she had in fact done the undressing herself. There were exactly two times in his life that he'd felt so completely helpless and terrified. One was the death of his mother. The other was Single-Eye's invasion of his mind. And now, with Robin…

Nausea boiled up to his throat. It wasn't that she'd invaded him. Perhaps the magic behind it wasn't so different from what Single-Eye could do, but this wasn't a brute-force mental attack. No, this was something far more insidious, far more gradual. Like a virus, spreading through his mind's every cell, subtly altering them as it went, assimilating his memories and thoughts, his very identity, before he could do anything to stop it. Not that he could have done anything to stop it, of course, he realized with an interior shiver of existential horror. She could have taken him over completely. In that moment, there would have been no difference between them. She would have been him—Amon Nagira would have ceased to exist, however animated his body continued to be.

As though his thoughts had called her, Amon heard a soft rapping on the door. He clamped his lips shut and didn't answer. He wondered, suddenly, if she could still hear him: Don't come in, he thought in her direction. Apparently, she wasn't receiving him; he heard the door open quietly, and light footsteps tread on his threshold. Robin.

“Amon…” He flinched.

Her breath caught. She had seen his movement. Hesitantly, helplessly, she drew closer to him. He remained still, not daring to breathe. “Amon, please…” Her hand, complete with its invasive, electric touch, landed between his shoulder blades. He eeled away from it immediately. Robin removed her hand, as though burned. “Amon…” she whispered. “I'm sorry…” She ran from his room into her own on fleet feet, slamming the door behind her. A moment later the sounds of her weeping penetrated the door, traveling to him, even under his covers, such was her grief, and it wasn't silenced until he pressed his hands over his ears.

***

The time for dinner came. Robin didn't go. Amon would have heard her door, and it didn't budge. Nagira came to visit him instead. “Buddy?” he asked, opening the door. “It's dinner time, and-” Nagira's eyes lit on his brother's face, really seeing it for the first time all day. His smile disappeared. Quickly, he shut the door behind him and crossed the room to where Amon now sat up in bed listlessly. “What happened?” he asked.

Amon's mouth opened. “Robin…” He gestured uselessly. “We…”

“Holy shit,” Nagira swore bluntly. “You mean you finally-”

Amon's head turned to him sharply, silencing him. He kept his mouth shut tight, swallowing, mastering the trembling something inside him that was neither anger nor sadness, and said simply: “No.”

Nagira nodded slowly. “Okay,” he said heavily. “Wrong question. Why don't you tell me what happened?”

“Rabbi Murano taught us something new, today,” Amon explained, his voice dripping sarcasm. “Something he thought would help.”

His brother frowned. “What was it?”

Amon cringed, his lips involuntarily forming a bitter snarl. “Something Robin and I can do together,” he answered. “Something she can't do without a power like mine.”

Nagira's frown deepened. “Is that why all the lights in the house flickered at once, today?” he asked.

Amon blinked. “Everything in the house?”

His brother nodded. “Monica was complaining, said her computer shut off for no reason.”

Amon bent at the waist, placing his chin on his palms. “I didn't know it was that bad,” he murmured.

Nagira shrugged. “No harm done. So you're powerful together. You'll know better, next time.”

Amon shook his head. “There isn't going to be a next time.”

Nagira sat down on the bed. “What exactly is this new technique?”

Amon turned to him, his eyes imploring. “She was inside my head, Syungi.” His long fingers climbed up his temples and into his scalp. “Right here. And I couldn't get her out. It was as though everything that comprises my very self, every scrap of individuality, went up in smoke like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Every cell was on fire. Like a forest fire, inside my head.” He felt rather than saw his brother wince. “She could see everything. Nothing was private. There was no separation…” He shuddered with disgust.

“Could you do the same to her?” Nagira wondered.

Amon brought his hands down. “What?”

“It has to go both ways, doesn't it?” his brother continued. “I mean, she can't open a channel one way.”

“She's the most powerful Witch in the world; I think she can do whatever the hell she wants,” Amon retorted. “I'm not even safe inside my own head, anymore, Syungi-”

“Maybe she was just as scared as you were,” Nagira theorized. “I mean, maybe just as you felt her reaching, she felt you-”

“You're not listening!” Amon insisted hotly. “You don't get it! You weren't there.”

“And you're refusing to see the other side of the issue,” Nagira accused, his voice far more reserved. “Remember which one of us is the litigator, little brother. I didn't pass the bar for not looking at something from all angles.” He folded his arms. “Now, what exactly were you so afraid of her seeing?”

Amon stared at him, agog. “She was treading in places she had absolutely no right to go.”

“You didn't answer my question.”

“Your question is irrelevant! It doesn't matter what she looked at, what matters is that she tried in the first place.”

“How do you know she was trying?”

Amon's gaze was now murderous. “Why are you taking her side in this?”

“I'm not taking anyone's side. I'm just trying to figure out what happened.”

Amon growled. “It's fucking delightful to you, isn't it, that she can do this,” he muttered. “You love the fact that she can peer inside my head, see everything she's not supposed to-”

“It would certainly speed things up.”

Amon leapt at his brother, going for the throat but only in a vague way, tackling him off the bed. They rolled awkwardly. Amon was faster, yes, but Nagira was heavier, his shoulders broader. He held Amon away from him, while the other man hissed air between his teeth with rage. “The truth hurts, doesn't it?” Nagira asked.

“Damn you,” Amon gritted, and clawed at his brother's throat. Nagira took a fistful of his brother's hair and savagely pulled it, using it as leverage to haul himself up and over Amon. He now sat on top of him, using his weight to pin Amon's arms.

“It's not that she did it in the first place, is it?” Nagira demanded. “It's that you liked it.”

Amon writhed, making futile punches at his brother's shoulders and ears. They both knew that had he been thinking clearly, he would have put Nagira out of commission by now, but he wasn't thinking clearly at all. Nagira pressed on his shoulders. “I'm right, and we both know it,” Nagira said roughly. “You said it yourself—she lit fires all through you, she warmed even the places you can't touch-”

“I hate you!” Amon yowled, and with a burst of his Craft, he sent a blast of frost, and his brother, sailing across the room.

Panting, Nagira shook his head. He was a jumble of limbs on the floor. “It's not me you hate,” he gasped. “You hate yourself—for wanting her, for not being able to have her, and for having the moral code that forbids it in the first place.” He swallowed loudly. “And you hate yourself for enjoying her, so much, in the moments when both of you succumb in your own twisted, painful little way.” He panted. “You hate her, for giving you the signals any other man could interpret with his eyes shut.”

“I don't hate Robin,” Amon said flatly. He shook his head, shut his eyes. “She's sixteen, Syungi.”

“Was Touko much older?”

Amon's dark eyes snapped open, twin pools of hate. “Don't push it.” He sighed. “They're nothing alike.”

“No, you actually love Robin, instead of just pretending to,” Nagira replied.

Furious, Amon sent a wave of cold into his dressing mirror, icing over all six feet of its antique surface until it crackled under the strain and his contorted face was entirely invisible. He breathed heavily, and turned back to his brother. Nagira drew breath.

“If you didn't,” he said calmly, “you would have fucked her, by now.”

Amon realized that his brother had saved this for a moment when he was depleted, so that he couldn't kill him outright. “I don't ever want to hear her name and that word in the same sentence ever again,” he murmured, and stood up. “Now, get out.”

Complacent, Nagira stood up, brushed himself off, and gave his brother a smile before letting himself out.

***

“Sequestering a civilian against her will?” the Arch-Inquisitor demanded. Mulligan was pushing ninety, but like many good Irishmen of his lineage, was aging well. He was a tiny man with awful hearing, ensuring that his voice droned on completely ignorant of cadence. Behind his back, he was jokingly referred to as “the leprechaun” by young Inquisitors-in-training, or, if they had run afoul of him, “the hobgoblin.” Light bounced off his Brylcreemed, iron-gray hair. He frowned through glasses at Gabriel Koushon.

“What possessed you?” he hissed.

Koushon sat up taller in his chair. “Intelligence reports suggested that she too was searching for Amon Nagira and Robin Sena,” he answered. “I assume you are familiar with those cases.”

“You would do better not to assume so much!” the Arch-Inquisitor spat. “You have over-reached yourself, Koushon, through your assumption of too much authority. Am I familiar with the cases?” His tone was mocking, despite its customary inability to modulate itself. “What do you you think, Gabriel? Do I look like a man who is uninformed?”

“I merely wished to ascertain-”

“And what's this about visiting Father Colegui?” Mulligan interrupted. “The man has taken a vow of silence; what could you possibly have to say to one another?”

“The conversation was a trifle one-sided,” Inquisitor Koushon admitted.

“Don't be smart. Why would you deliberately endeavor to tempt one of your brethren into breaking his holy vow to God?” The Arch-Inquisitor's lips pursed. “Unless you were looking for details on the whereabouts of his grand-daughter,” he theorized. Watching Koushon's eyes widen a fraction, his throat rattled with fury. “This obsession of yours has gone on long enough!” he coughed. “You have real work to do, and you should get to it!”

“Father,” Koushon addressed Mulligan with his priestly honorific, “have you seen the report by Margarethe Bonn, Mr. Nagira's replacement-”

“Margarethe Bonn helped Zaizen's daughter make her complaint!” Mulligan rasped. “Don't think for a moment that you'll gain any help on your little quest from that quarter. Bonn is a smart woman. Smarter than you, in fact—although that's not saying much, apparently; you had a civilian woman arrested right off the street, like a common thug.” The Arch-Inquisitor beseeched the heavens with liver-spotted hands. “I've known gun-toting Orangemen with more subtlety than you.”

Mulligan's gaze landed on his subordinate. “Since the Middle Ages, Solomon has depended entirely on the goodwill of the community,” he reminded Koushon. “Our first task, above all others, is self-preservation. We cannot do anything at all which might jeopardize popular opinion.” The Arch-Inquisitor cleared his throat. “That includes random arrests, Gabriel.”

Gabriel sighed, and did his best to look apologetic. “You have made that abundantly clear, sir.”

“This will never happen again, will it?”

Koushon shook his head. “Never.”

When he was finally free of the Arch-Inquisitor's office, his first call was to St. Martin, his true superior. Claude-Louis was his mentor and the secretary of the Knights of Solomon. As the go-between of numerous individuals and eschelons within the brotherhood, he held what many believed to be the highest level of power within it. Gabriel was privileged to have his ear, and knew it with every fiber of his being. St. Martin was the possessor of most of Solomon's secrets—there was no man better informed.

On the phone, he was as smooth and polished as he was in person. Gabriel could imagine him, languidly posed somewhere, his joints and tendons still perfectly silent and helpful despite his white hair and crows' feet, effusing elegance no matter what the setting. “I heard that you would have trouble with Mulligan,” St. Martin said conversationally, his tone friendly and dismissive of Gabriel's problems, making them into minor altercations not to be worried over. “The man knows nothing, of course. He could never see us for what we truly are.” Claude-Louis exhaled heavily, perhaps breathing out smoke.

“He also knew of my visit to Colegui,” Koushon added.

“And Colegui continues his silence,” St. Martin replied. “I know you were hoping to pressure the truth from him, my friend, but it appears that Juliano is obdurate as a diamond on this matter.” Another sigh. “He remembers his vow to God, if not to us.”

Of course, it was St. Martin who knew everything, who had a finger in every dish, who had understood the enormity of Taodo's experiments before that traitor Zaizen had ever suspected. It was he who first revealed to Gabriel the nature of young Robin Sena. Koushon, who had Inquired the young lady, hadn't wanted to believe it. But the truth was there, in the documents only St. Martin would have access to, and in the testimony of others that St. Martin had found—other doctors, ones who remembered Taodo.

“You did well to call me, Gabriel,” St. Martin added. “However, I have other matters to attend to. The search for Robin Sena will continue, I assure you.” The two men bid one another goodbye, and rang off.

In an office overlooking the magnificence of St. Peter's Square, Claude-Louis St. Martin finished a cup of sugared espresso and set the tiny porcelain cup down in its saucer. He wondered if somewhere, Robin Sena was doing the same. He'd discovered, in his many and diverse attempts at surveillance, that she was a fellow aficionado. Even in Japan, she had sought it out, drunk it much the same way he did—without all that American tomfoolery of steamed milk and tooth-rotting syrup. It was one of the many things he appreciated about the girl, although they had never met.

The truth was that he loved women, although his experience with them was slight and rare, at least in the area of romantic entanglements. But despite this, or perhaps because of it, he loved them, loved their enigmatic detachment, their ability to make decisions on the slightest of whims, the thought processes completely hidden from men like him. Perhaps that was what he enjoyed so much, when he stared at the glossy, grainy photos of Robin Sena in her most candid moments—her face was so open, ready to be interpreted and guessed at, and yet the shy, immensely powerful young Witch followed an interior logic he couldn't quite grasp. He felt as he knew the ex-Hunter Amon Nagira must have felt also: mystified, confused, beguiled by the guileless. Men like him were always surprised and therefore slightly frightened by honesty. Such purity of heart was surreal, the stuff of fairy tales and sad dreams. He was willing to bet that in person, this quality of Robin's was all the more powerful.

A soft buzzer sounded on his desk. “Your Eminence?”

Claude-Louis turned regretfully from the view, the vast brickwork of the Square, the ramrod-straight Swiss Guard soldiers at the gate, and pushed the lighted button. “Yes?”

“There's a phone call for you, sir.”

“I'll take it, thank you.” Claude-Louis St. Martin settled in the large, rich chair at his desk, and answered the telephone, handling its plastic surface the same way he might have done in another century, were the phone made of polished wood and the bone of a hunted animal. “Yes.”

Oh, it was this call. The one he had expected for quite some time. He nodded, took in the information, and bade the traitor go on with his obvious little machinations. If now was the time, so be it. The man was obviously champing at the bit. Claude-Louis hung up the phone a few moments later, admiring the ring on his left hand, the smooth-faced ruby cabochon, an eternal droplet forever imprisoned, depthless, surrounded by a bezel of gold. He had never kissed his own ring, of course. That was for supplicants and visitors. It came with the red robes that he wore on formal occasions, the robes he would wear when, as a Cardinal, he helped to choose the next Pope.

***

Under her father's advisement, Monica stood outside the bathroom, pausing to gather herself before walking in on Robin's bath. The Eve of Witches sat surrounded by bubbles, staring at the tiled wall opposite her. Her face barely registered Monica's entrance. Monica attributed this to the fact that Robin's sensitivities were growing—her arrival would come as no surprise. She was well-accustomed to this phenomenon with her father; there was little the man didn't know, as a result of his Craft.

“I've had the kitchens save you a little something,” Monica said. There was no response. “I thought you might be hungry, as you missed dinner.”

Robin remained implacably silent. She breathed in, breathed out, barely disturbing the surface of the water. Monica placed one hand on the lip of the tub as she sat down on a wrought iron chair beside it. “Robin, would you like to tell me what happened?”

There was a soft shake of the ginger-blond head, and Robin's green eyes continued boring into the wall. “Did you and Amon fight?” Monica asked.

Again, silence. Monica was beginning to feel frustrated. The petulant child act was not one that Robin usually performed. She was about to open her mouth and tell the girl so, when Robin spoke. Her voice was hollow. “Did your father watch you, while you were growing up?”

Monica frowned. “He did his best to take care of me, yes.”

“No.” Robin turned to her. “Did he watch you, in here?” She tapped her forehead. “Could he see everything?” She blinked, and her eyes were darker, more powerful. “Everything?”

Monica recoiled. The thought was vile. Her stomach clenched with revulsion. The Craft was not for surveillance, it was a gift, meant to be used with respect. The very thought of a father using the Craft to see his daughter's every thought was repugnant. Monica suddenly wondered if Robin's anti-Witch upbringing had really changed her so deeply; if she still misunderstood the gift so completely. She frowned, imploring Robin to explain further. “I saw things I shouldn't have,” Robin said plainly, disgust naked in her voice.

Impulsively, Monica edged her hand over to Robin's shoulder, and the tide of feelings that greeted her was almost impossible to stem. It was hot, a desert wind, parching, blasting through every one of Monica's defenses. But even in that horrible storm she could feel the subtleties. The disgust was not for what she had seen, no, only that she had seen it, that she had had so little control, that she had ruined-

“No, Robin,” Monica gasped, bringing her hand away and staring balefully into Robin's sharp, gimlet gaze. “He doesn't think of you that way. He doesn't hate you.”

“How would you know?” Robin asked, her voice cold for the first time in Monica's experience. It was completely without forgiveness—for herself.

Monica thought about the girl sitting before her, about the howling sandstorm inside her. She wondered how safe Robin would be if she thought her warden hated her—if they could not trust one another. She opened her mouth. But before she could speak, a ripple of noise downstairs stopped her. The two women frowned at one another. Another discharge of sound, accompanied by the tinkling of shattered glass. Monica's heart froze in her chest. Her mind slowed. She heard her father yelling. Suddenly there was another man's voice, shouting, angry, terrified. More noise. And then her mind identified the sound: gunfire.

“Run,” she said.

***

Doujima was sitting outside by the pool, reading a magazine. She was enjoying the pleasant burn of the sun, the way she knew those nasty harmful rays that she adored so much were working their way into her skin and hair, tanning and bleaching. She smiled, sipped her drink, wiggled more into her lawn chair. She was reading about the latest styles of fall boots when the first pops of gunfire snapped into the air above her. The magazine dropped. She saw the men waiting in the hills—not night-hidden paratroopers, they were in camouflage, posed in broad daylight. She saw them. They saw her. The shots were fired again.

Doujima rolled away awkwardly, her bare feet slapping the concrete and tile, running away from the pool. Her sunglasses slid down her sweaty nose. Gunfire sounded again, and breathless, impossible pain ripped through her. Something hot exploded on her back. She staggered, fell. The house, and help, was only a few feet away. It might as well have been an entire continent.

***

Amon was continuing to hide out in his room when he first heard the sounds. His Hunter brain recognized gunfire immediately, and he rolled off the bed and toward the hidden armaments closet. He quickly holstered two guns and ammunition for both. He pocketed his keys, and entered Robin's room. She wasn't there. Leaving, he went into the hallway. Chaos ruled. Don Zabini was yelling something; armed men were shouting and running to the back side of the house to return fire. Cursing, Amon began opening random doors. He had no idea where Robin might be, having not attended dinner. She could be anywhere. He willed himself not to panic. Robin had adequately defended herself against bullets before. And she wasn't stupid. She was a lot of things, but not stupid. She would not run headlong into a battle. In fact, she might be more likely to hide from one, if she thought it the smarter course of action.

Unbidden, a memory from Ravens' Flat came to him: Robin cowered at the feet of a Solomon paratrooper, a huge gun in her face, watching the shooter uncertainly, until Amon flooded the room with light. But until that moment, she'd been waiting, simply waiting, and expecting death at any moment…

Doors opened on empty rooms. Chaos ensued downstairs. He thought he heard the shouts increase in volume. He pushed open the bathroom door and there was Robin, with wet hair, clutching a bathrobe about herself. Her eyes went wide and she almost shrank, her face moving not to look at him. They stared at the floor, simultaneously knowing that this was not the time for awkwardness, but unable to forestall it nonetheless. “We're under attack,” Amon said brusquely. She nodded, mute. “Put on some clothes. I'll take you to your room.”

He held open the door and silently, swiftly, she went outside and padded to her room. He shut the door behind them and turned around while she changed, staring hard at the doors. Gunshots rattled and he felt her flinch and heard her catch her breath in a hiss, but she said nothing. “What's taking you?”

“I'm packing a bag.”

“There's no time for that!” Amon snarled. He whirled. Robin was throwing things haphazardly into a case. His eyes lit on her and she shrank, again, her hands stilled. There was a fight plain in her face, but she stifled it, shut the case.

“We don't know when we can come back,” she said quietly, steadily. “We need our documents.”

Emergency alarms were ringing through the house. Gunfire strafed through windows and walls. Angry shouts in Italian floated upstairs. Without a word, Amon went to his room and picked up the fake documents Michael had manufactured, as well as another gun. The weapon he handed to Robin, and she stared at it, looked at its leaden weight in her hand. Her eyes lifted to look at Amon. He had no time for the greater implications of handing Robin a weapon, and jerked his head toward the door. He checked the hallway first, and urged them outside, covering Robin with his gun out.

They found the service staircase and proceeded downstairs, seeing other armed men from the compound manning the windows. Maids and kitchen staff in uniforms were crawling on their hands and knees toward an exit. “We have to get to the library level,” Amon said grimly. “To do that, we need the mudroom elevator. It's the only entrance to the level we need.”

Robin nodded. The mudroom was across the foyer from them. The foyer was crowded with men in slick Italian clothes on their hands and knees, posed behind furniture, guns out. Shots were being fired by either side. There were already two injured men, moaning and cursing and holding bloody wounds shut with the palms of their hands. At the opposite wall, flickering across the doors, were tiny red lights. Sniper rifles. “They're waiting for us,” Amon whispered. “When I tell you, I want you to crawl across the floor.”

He could hear Robin's breathing, watch her thin shoulders rise and fall. She nodded again. Moving behind her, Amon gently took the slim case from her fingers. She let go silently. He placed the case on the floor. “Are you ready?” Robin nodded yet again. Amon sent the case skidding across the floor with a swift kick. It landed across the room from them, just as he had intended.

“Go now.”

Instantly, Robin was on her hands and knees, scrabbling across the floor. He noticed, absently, that she was wearing the dress Doujima had first bought her, green and white, flashing across the polished wood. Her palms slapped the surface as she crawled forward. He was behind her, slithering the way he'd been taught, the advantages of combat training allowing him to move more smoothly than his adolescent partner. He focused on the doorway opposite them, wondered how long the elevator would take to rise to their level, how long he would have to wait for a lull to work the buttons—he bumped into Robin.

“What's wrong with you?” he snapped.

Robin was halted, mid-crawl, her left hand still in the air, the arm bent at the elbow. Her eyes were staring outside, onto the patio, through the wall of windows. The glass was now spiderwebbed with bulletholes. Through it, Amon could discern the shape of a woman, her limbs thrown at odd angles, surrounded by blood. “Mother of God,” Robin whispered.

“YURIKA!” Amon saw his brother's blur moving with surprising agility, throwing himself past armed men, darting through forests of bullet-riddled furniture now spilling stuffing and springs. He half-stood before he could think:

“Syungi, don't!”

Syungi ignored him. Amon was powerless to stop him. Nagira, heedless of all danger, ran outside, into the fray, his steps pounding the pavement beside the deceptively tranquil pool. They watched as he crashed to a halt beside Doujima, kneeling over her. He rocked forward, as though about to vomit. Instead he drew his gun, and began firing into the hills, determined, a slow, deliberate strafe. Time stopped. Amon watched his brother fire round after round. The shells fell beside Doujima's body. Then a bullet from the return fire hit his brother, knocking him clean over. The gun left Nagira's hands. He did not get up.

First my mother.

Now my brother.

Because of me.

Amon felt a cold, clammy hand cover his own. He turned. Robin was watching him. Her lips trembled. Her eyes were wide, impossibly green and wet. Her face had gone paper-white. “We have to go, now,” she whispered, choking.

Fighting a rising tide of nausea, Amon turned from her back to the windows. The gunfire had resumed. His brother lay in a pool of Doujima's blood, unaided, helpless. Something hot and devastatingly heavy formed in Amon's throat and burned its way to his eyes. His mouth opened and remembered the scream of years past; the old crime come to haunt him now, his pitiful, childish uselessness resurrected the way his family could never be. Mouth open, eyes burning, he turned back to Robin. He tried to breathe. He failed. Failed, failed over and over again, failed today the way he had then, the way he did all the time. Robin's fingers nervously gripped his, her nails scraping the wood. He blinked. Her eyes held him in place. They were insistent and hard, desperate, like her voice.

“Amon…you promised me.” Her face softened, beginning to melt into tears. “Please don't leave me.”

He swallowed. He nodded. He gestured for her to precede him, and she continued crawling. Her gun grated the floor awkwardly. They reached the elevator and the case, and Robin reached up to work the buttons. A tense moment later, they crawled into the elevator and Amon input the code for the library level. Without speaking they watched the numbers move across the screen and felt the pressure shift as they landed on the library level, deep underground, far beneath the strife. With a chime the doors opened. The escape continued.