The Sixth Seal полностью

“If the facility above us once contained life,” Yana added, “then surely what lies down below only contains death.”

The elevator descended slowly into a vertical shaft of stone. Zahra rocked back and forth in her boots. She wanted more than anything to get moving again. Standing and waiting wasn’t doing it for her — for her mind. It gave her time to think. Being alone with her thoughts wasn’t what she needed right now.

After ten seconds of being encased in stone, their shoe tops were kissed by a soft glow of light as the elevator exited the shaft.

Then, their knees entered the void beyond.

Even from still inside the shaft, Zahra could tell the next room was massive, bigger than anything so far. She pictured the floor of all three wings, the split they each sported.

They share the same basement?

When they were waist-deep in the open air, more lights kicked on somewhere below. The three operatives stepped closer to the edge and looked down. Once they were completely free of the claustrophobic elevator shaft, Zahra couldn’t remember how to breathe. Her chest constricted, and her eyes ceased to blink.

“What the hell are those?” she asked.

Zahra was pretty sure she knew what they used to be, but now, they were something else altogether.

Four unbelievably large airplanes dotted the floor of a room that absolutely dwarfed them. Zahra guessed the space had originally been a natural cavern one thousand feet across and fifty feet high.

Yana leaned into view next to her as they chugged along. “Those would be our missing Geisterbombers.” She studied them for a moment before speaking again. “They are heavily modified Superfortress bombers, the B-29. They have an impressive wingspan of one hundred and forty feet from wing tip to wing tip. Behemoths of the sky. I personally love the all-glass, checkerboard noses bombers like these had during the era.”

Hammet stepped up next to Yana. “The fact that there are four of them lends to the scope of this place. It also makes sense why there are four when you consider the people responsible.”

“The Sixth Seal? Why’s that?” Zahra asked.

Hammet glanced at her. “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the Book of Revelation, they are released, one at a time, with the opening of the first four seals.” He pointed at each, naming them. “Death, famine, war, and conquest.”

“You seem to know a lot about this,” Zahra said. “The Book of Revelation, I mean.”

“You can thank my mother for that.”

Hammet didn’t go into any further details.

“Look at the cables,” Yana said, gesturing up at the ceiling. “Why are there so many?”

She was right. Every square inch of the ceiling, except for the underside of the three wings’ floors, was covered in cables of all sizes. Zahra recalled the cables running down into the floor from the throw switch back up at ground level.

“Whatever is still powering this facility is down here somewhere. I bet these cables snake through the entire Underworld.”

“They continue into the center of the room — the hangar — too.”

Yana was right. Zahra spotted several groups of them running down the walls and across the floor, using canal-like depressions to do so. Then, they met in the middle and disappeared beneath a raised platform.

“Are you a pilot?” Hammet asked Yana.

She nodded. “Helicopters mostly. It all depends on the flight controls, but I can get almost anything in the air.”

“Can you get them back on the ground?” he asked. “Without killing everyone inside?”

She looked away. “…uh, still working on that part.”

“Still, you seem to know planes well,” he continued.

“Only the famous ones.”

Now, it was Zahra’s turn. “These are famous?” She wasn’t an aeronautics enthusiast.

“Yes,” Yana replied. “The B-29 Superfortress bombed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To this day, it is the only aircraft to ever drop a nuclear weapon in combat.”

The trio fell into silence until Zahra noticed something odd about the planes. As more and more lights kicked on, the Geisterbomber’s hulls began to blur.

She rubbed her eyes, but didn’t help. “Tell me you see that too.”

“I do,” Hammet replied.

“As do I,” Yana said.

The only way she could describe what was happening to the planes was that the ambient light was bending around them. It was as if the light was allergic to them.

“Cloaking…” Yana muttered. “This is what they talked about when they mentioned cloaking.”

“What’s causing it?” Hammet asked.

Yana shrugged. “I have no idea. Some kind of special coating?”

“From eighty years ago?” Zahra asked rhetorically. “We don’t have that kind of tech now.”

“Look!” Hammet said, pointing at the nearest B-29. “The tail, it’s gone!”

He was right. The tail of the bomber slowly blurred. Then it vanished. The lower they traveled, the more the plane faded from view. Suddenly, it reappeared as their line of sight shifted again.

It was the craziest thing Zahra had ever seen.