*6*

They stood in the entrance to a huge chamber.  The firelight revealed only some of the huge space: it was perhaps two stories high and fifteen meters wide but its length from left to right was lost in the shadows making it at least double as long as it was wide.

He stood in a stone archway staring around the room in amazement.  Everything was carved out of stone: what he could see of the walls were covered in carvings, ornate patterns flowed up the many two-story pillars that bisected the room in four lines, the few stone coffins he could see clearly in the dimness were carved with writing and detailed imagery, and even the floor had been carved with patterns and little indented Symbol of the Founder sigils clustered together.

The others stepped down from the archway into the chamber following Father Owen to the right.  The fire light moved away in that direction and shadows dimmed the air around him.

Behind, back the way they’d come leading back to the first chamber a loud crack got his attention.  He heard voices: they’d broken through!

Stepping down into the chamber he jogged after the small group.  Everyone looked tired.  The eldest child walked silently with his head down, the youngest child was asleep his head resting on his mother’s shoulder and the girl had been picked up again by her father; pain pulsed around her from her badly sprained ankle.  All three adults looked tired and the parents seemed especially haggard in their exhaustion.

Tae jogged up to the priest’s side and put a hand on his shoulder.  Blue eyes reflecting darkly in the fire light looked sideways at him.  Tae’s voice was a whisper.  “Father, they’ve broken through the wall.  You go on ahead with the others and get them to safety then come back for me.  But be careful.”
The priest nodded and Tae turned back towards the stone archway.

He had to find a place where he could see the archway but had cover and before all of the light was gone.  There were lines of square stone coffins all around him, at the nearest edge of the room the wall was black rock and another throne had been carved into the wall on a platform.  As he neared a good vantage point to view the archway the fire light flickered out of sight and plunged him into near-darkness.  Next to him were more stone coffins and he quickly ducked down behind one.  He hoped that their pursuers would have a torch of some kind otherwise he would probably only be able to hear them, which didn’t make shooting accurately very easy.  To complicate the situation more-so this black stone seemed to block or interfere with his Psi abilities: he couldn’t sense anyone and yet he knew there had to be people within his range to sense even if only above him.

Tae sat in the darkness with his back to cold black stone.  He couldn’t hear any more noise or sense anything so he waited calmly.

He knew he should be creeped out by the situation; he was after all in the pitch black underground and in an ancient tomb with no way of escaping but in fact he wasn’t creeped out at all.  It was oddly peaceful in this ancient temple and he found himself absorbing that peacefulness into himself.  There was no psychic chatter or emotions to clutter his mind, no noises, no demands, and he wasn’t particularly afraid of these two men.

There was just peace there in the black and his mind went utterly quiet for a moment.  In the silence his mind stepped back from the present and hovered sedately into memory.  Images and feelings from the past flickered randomly through his mind.

He heard Father Owen’s voice: whispered, quiet and almost mournful.  “Let us bury and mourn the dead, but lest the grief take from us our very life, let us also celebrate that we are living.”

Death was a part of life.  Any Rebel knew this.  A friend could be alive and happy one day then dead the next.  No one could change that fact at least not without completely destroying the Agency and plunging Arana into anarchy.

He smiled slightly as he remembered his old friends; those he had recently lost.  He heard the sounds of laughter and saw the image of Bez and Ella playing tickle with their two eldest children.  More images flickered in his mind, the teenage twins pulling faces to make the serious old Braan smile and Braan holding his serious face until they gave up and left the room, only then he would turn to Tae and laugh in that deep raspy voice of his.  He remembered Ana and Nala laughing as they waited for Braan to sit on his favorite chair after the twins had sawn through the legs as a joke.

There had been so much laughter over their three years together as a lesser Rebel Cell.  He had so many memories of good times with them and now it was all over.  There was only Nala and the three children left.

A tear found its way out of one eye and dropped slowly down his cheek.  He missed them all so much.

Hiran’s gentle face came to his mind.

Loose black hair framed an oval regal face and blue eyes darker than the ocean smiled playfully at him.  Long delicate fingers touched his unshaven cheek.
“You’re an ugly one, Taelin… but you’re good in bed… so I think I might keep you.”
He laughed.  “Keep me?  What happened to just friends with benefits?”
Mischief underlined her voice.  “I killed it… is that bad?”
His voice dropped into gentle affection.  “No, it’s not bad.”

A sound snapped him out of his memories.  There were voices and heavy footsteps on stone.  He stiffened.  Someone swore and Tae watched above him as the beam of a torch cut the dusty air like a knife.  He wiped his face and eyes of tears with one sleeve and re-gripped his gun.

“Follow them into the sewers you said… it’ll be fine, you said… they can’t get far!  Soth’en, Junior, your dad is going to kill us if we ever get out of this forsaken place.”

Tae peaked around the side of the stone coffin.  Two men stood in the archway.  The bald bouncer held a small electric torch, the other man was much younger and he seemed rather afraid.
“Let’s just tell dad we lost them in the sewers and get out of here.  This place gives me the creeps.”
“He’ll know.  We’ve got to at least try.  C’mon, grow some balls and let’s get on with it.  Which way do you think they went, left or right?”
The younger man shrugged.  “I don’t know, right?”

Carefully, Tae clicked his safety off.  He waited under cover for the torchlight to flare away in the other direction.  Then standing up, most of his body still protected by the stone coffin, he lifted his gun and fired at the two men.

The younger one fell down almost immediately but the bald bouncer ran for cover and jumped behind a large pillar.  The torch fell from his hands as he ran and it bounced off the stone floor before blinking out.  The room fell into blackness and Tae ducked behind the stone coffin again.  Breathing very quietly he listened and reached out with his mind to see if he could locate the bouncer.

He could sense the badly injured semi-conscious young man lying on the ground at the base of the archway.  He radiated pain and fear in sharp pulses around him.  But it seemed that the stone pillar stopped Tae sensing the bouncer although he could hear the man’s quick fearful breathing only meters away from him.

He poked his head slightly above the stone coffin and tried to see the man.  It was too dark to see a lot of detail: he saw the lines of the pillars and the lines of the coffins on the other side of the pillars but it was otherwise all in black and gray shadows.  To his right his eyes picked up something moving between a pillar and a flare of empathic tension told him that it wasn’t a trick of the eye but that it was the bouncer moving.

Careful to be quiet Tae moved around the stone coffin and to its side so he could get a better view of the man as he moved.  He walked slowly, this bouncer, slow and careful: away from his friend and away from where Tae was.  The points in his movement where he wasn’t behind a thick pillar Tae sensed that he was looking for better cover and a better vantage point to take out the man who had intruded on their bar and possibly hurt Tandi.

Tae stepped towards the man following his movements carefully and calmly, but also making sure that the man would not see him.  They walked from pillar to pillar across the center of the huge chamber, both of them keeping distance and cover between them.  In the moments where Tae could sense what was going on in the man’s mind he saw that he was aware of Tae following him.  And the man seemed to become more and more frightened for his life.

The man stepped behind another pillar and disappeared from Tae’s sight.  Tae stepped out of his own cover to follow and sensed movement to one side of him.  Too late to react the bouncer stepped out from cover right next to him.  He heard the sound of the loading mechanism of a revolver click and something cold and metallic touched his left temple.

Tae stiffened.