The Forgotten Room

He rushed up to the lab table. Knocking away the surrounding cage, he saw the device was powered by two small white wires and a toggle switch inserted into the base. The wires led away to a standard electrical plug, which he picked up and slid into an outlet in the side of the lab table. Nothing happened. He pressed the toggle switch. It must have acted as a fail-safe mechanism, because immediately the generator came to life, humming and vibrating. He fell back, ducking down into the doorway and out of harm’s way. As he did so, the door at the far end of the lab flew open with a violent slam.

As the three men stormed into the room, the Van de Graaff generator went crazy; freed of the restraining mesh, it began shooting out bolts of lightning in every direction, glancing off metal chairs and tables and racks of equipment, the blue and yellow tongues licking their way up the walls in uncontrolled, spastic gestures.

The men paused a moment, staring at the awesome display of electricity streaming out in a hundred jagged lines from the metal sphere. Then one of them — the man in the waterproof jacket — stepped gingerly forward. Quick as a striking snake, a jumping, dancing bolt of electricity shot out from the generator and almost encircled him. His body jerked for a moment under the current, and then he fell to the ground, temporarily stu

Logan backed away still farther, out of the lab and into the short hallway. It was as he’d hoped: with the generator ru

“Thank you, Dr. Wallace,” he murmured. One down, two to go…

Suddenly, silently, the lights went out.

For a moment, Logan remained in stasis, uncertain of what had happened. Almost instantly, he realized: the storm had cut power to the mansion.

Feeling frantically around in the complete blackness, patting himself, he found first his flashlight, then his knife. It was just possible that, in the dark, he could make his way to the three, grab a gun, and then…

Red emergency lighting glowed into view. Then — fitfully at first, and with increasing strength — the main lights came back on.

Had the power been restored so soon? But no — the lights were still a little dim and uncertain. Lux’s backup generator must have kicked in.

On the far end of the lab, he heard a groan as someone tried to rise to his feet.

Logan peered around the doorframe at the Van de Graaff generator. It was dead, powerless. Activating it again meant using the toggle switch. To attempt to approach it again, exposing himself to a field of fire, would be madness.

He wheeled around, looking down the short hallway. His eye paused at the oversized ventilation grate.

Maybe, just maybe…

He rushed over to the grate and knelt, flipping out the blade of his knife and ru

He heard voices around the corner now, growing closer. Logan moved the knife to another edge of the grate, working it loose with the blade….

With a faint snick, the blade snapped off near its base.

Jesus, what else! Pocketing the broken knife and grasping at the partially loosened grating, he yanked at it with a grunt. With a pop, pop, pop of screws tearing out of the wall it came away, and he flung it across the hallway. From around the corner came the sound of ru

In the faint light of the hallway, he could see that a forced-air ventilation duct lay on the far side of a square hole the grate had covered. The stainless steel of the duct looked thin but well secured, and its passage was wide enough to accommodate his body. It ran straight ahead for about three feet, then sloped upward, toward the first floor.

On hands and knees he ducked into the improvised crawl space, the steel skin around him wobbling and swaying fearfully. If he could just make it back up to the main floor, he told himself, he’d be able to —

There was a sudden shriek of rending metal; a crack of failing rivets; and then the duct gave way and Logan began to fall into an unknowable blackness.

49

He plummeted downward through inky darkness. And then, quite suddenly, he hit something hard and unyielding. White light exploded in his head, and he lost consciousness.

He came to slowly, laboriously, like a swimmer struggling to reach the surface. It seemed to take forever. One after another, his senses returned. The first thing he became aware of was pain — his back, right knee, and head were throbbing, all at different, nauseating cadences. Next was sight. He could make out a smear of light — no, two smears of light — against the blackness that surrounded him.

Next: sound. He could hear whispers, different voices, speaking from somewhere above him, near the lights.

He blinked, blinked again, tried to sit up. A stab of pain went through his knee, and he bit down on his lip to avoid crying out. His sight was clearing a little, and he could now tell that the smears of light were actually flashlight beams. They were lancing here and there, probing down from the ruins of the ventilation duct.

Logan realized that, however it seemed to him, he must have been unconscious only a few seconds. His pursuers were still in the corridor above, crouching in the mouth of the ventilation duct, searching for him. He’d fallen into some kind of subbasement.

He tried once again to rise, and only now became aware that he was lying in six inches of cold, brackish water. It must be groundwater, he realized, leaching in from the saturated soil around the mansion’s foundation: a result of the torrential downpour. This time he was successful in forcing himself into a sitting position.

He waited, breathing heavily, for the pain to recede and full alertness to return. The flashlight beams were still moving around, but he had apparently fallen into a small cul-de-sac whose walls shielded him from the lights.

More whispered conversation. As he watched, one of the men — glasses winking in the flashlight beams — began crawling gingerly out onto the broken ductwork. It immediately bent under his weight and he turned, dropping into a prone position, spreading his weight across the base of the duct. The duct groaned in protest and — grasping at its broken corners — the man worked his way down the steel until he was dangling from its lower edge. Light from a flashlight reflected off his glasses. Another few seconds and he would drop to the floor of the subbasement.

Logan realized he had to move. As quietly as he could, using the stonework of the cul-de-sac for support, he rose to a standing position. His head throbbed, and the world rocked around him, but he clung fast to the wall.

He waited a moment for the grogginess and the worst of the pain to pass. He didn’t dare turn on his flashlight — assuming it hadn’t been broken in the fall — but a second man was still crouching in the entrance of the ventilation duct, illuminating his companion’s descent with his flashlight, and the faint glow of the reflected beam allowed Logan to make out his surroundings. He was in what looked like a catacomb: walls of ancient stonework and masonry; low ceilings, interrupted at intervals by Romanesque arches; thick columns — the Solomonic spiral columns found throughout the mansion — punctuating the dim spaces. Cobwebs were everywhere, and Logan could hear the faint squeaking of vermin. The close air stank of mildew and efflorescence. The place looked as if nobody had penetrated its recesses for a hundred years.

A faint splash a dozen feet away alerted Logan to the fact that the first of his pursuers had dropped into the subbasement. As the man turned to help the other descend, Logan — feeling his way along the damp stone — moved away as quickly and silently as he could.