Ethan arrived at the Mad Engineer's hideout with a faint smile tugging at his lips. During the flight over, he had passed the time imagining all the ways he might scare the reclusive lunatic half to death when he showed up unannounced. The man was brilliant, unstable, and endlessly entertaining. Ethan almost felt fond of him.
The so-called root cellar was not a cellar at all. It was a crude pit dug straight beneath a loose floorboard in the middle of the living room, reinforced just enough to keep the house from collapsing in on itself. Ethan stared at it during his earlier scan and shook his head.
Was this guy a mole in a past life? The place was stocked with crates of fruits and vegetables, enough supplies to last through a small apocalypse. There was only one light source down there, a single old bulb filmed over with dust. Ethan had briefly considered cutting the power just to hear the inevitable scream.
