Assassin's Apprentice: Chapter 42, Part 1

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42.

To Harper it seemed as if everything in the room was moving.

The floor crawled with rushing water. The dark shadows shifted to the accompaniment of unfamiliar but clearly threatening sounds. Overhead, the hanging lights quickly retracted upwards into holes in the ceiling. Metal lids slid over the light holes, sealing them from the rising water. Immediately, two rows of recessed red lights snapped on, both in the ceiling and the floor. They ran the entire length of the giant room, making it look like a landing strip.

The room glowed in a dark crimson hue, but didn’t cast enough light to distinguish clearly between shadows and objects more than twenty yards away. Like a sleazy bordello bedroom, Harper imagined, where neither party wants to clearly see the other. The red underwater lamps shimmered, making the pinkish water look bloody. Just enough light so the security cameras could continue monitoring, but not enough for Harper and Thomas to see what was coming at them.

Nevertheless, the three of them stood shoulder to shoulder, their guns aimed at the back of the room. Where all the angry sounds were coming from.

“What’s going to kill us first,” Harper asked, “the water or the monsters?” Her voice was steady as she kept her gun pointed at the dark side of the room.