Dust spun within the flashlight's beam dense like mist. Coughing and spitting out grit they evaluated the injury. Arthur bore a cut on his forehead. Isabella's ankle was sprained. Maria appeared pale yet composed her fingers already feeling Giovanni's pulse. Jacques, the pillar stood upright directing the light, toward the barrier of rubble blocking their way.
"No turning around " he declared, his tone a rough calm amidst the alarm. "We move onward. Channels like this possess alternative exits, for upkeep.. Ventilation shafts."
The tunnel ahead dipped further into darkness. The atmosphere became chillier more stagnant. Giovanni's arm no longer throbbed fiercely. The maze now felt burdensome like a dense weight. The message echoed in his thoughts. 'A witness I cannot mute.' He was the irregularity.. The creators of the deception had just attempted to conceal him with reality.
They strolled for what seemed like hours their steps resonating in a bleak cadence. Desperation started to creep in than the tunnel's atmosphere. Then Maria halted. "Hear that."
Not, toward sounds. Toward their absence. She rested her hand against the wall. "A flow. Not air. Water. Nearby." She glanced at Giovanni. "Your map. Does it indicate water?"
His attention was fixed on the pulsating emblem. In his imagination the maze patterns overlaid the vintage surveyor's chart Ibrahim had presented. "An ancient subterranean passage exists " he whispered. "It's a segment of the sewage network. It empties into the Isère River… assuming it's not obstructed."
"A path forward " Isabella whispered, her voice trembling with hope.
They discovered a metal upkeep ladder descending into a deeper conduit. A stream of water flowed along its base. Tracing it upstream proved pointless. Going downstream could direct them to the river.
The water level climbed with their progress starting as an ankle-deep stream and growing into a knee-high cold current that drained their energy and heat. The ceiling descended. Before long they were bent forward inching through a shadowy river within a stone passage.
Giovanni fell behind his body frozen, his thoughts wandering. The water, the shadows, the burden of the falsehood pressing on him—it seemed like disintegration. He pictured the core of the maze at last expanding engulfing him transforming him into merely another hidden quiet presence, in this subterranean realm of mysteries.
A hand clutched his arm tightly. Jacques. "Not at this spot " the large man muttered his teeth still chattering. "You can't disappear here. She requires your map. We all rely on your compass." He nodded in the direction of Isabella assisting Arthur and Maria who guided with a steadfast belief.
It was an obligation. He represented their message. He needed to be read through to the last word.
Ahead Maria let out a shout. "Light!"
It was not daylight. Instead a faint sickly greenish light filtered through grates positioned high overhead—likely street lamps from a nearby road or embankment. Ahead the channel terminated at a sturdy rusted grate that looked out onto a swifter, broader current of water: the Isère River.
The grate was sturdy the bars robust. Jacques pushed hard against it his muscles taut. It didn't move. They remained confined at the brink of liberty.
Weariness and chill seemed ready to consume them. Suddenly from the passageway a noise emerged. Not tumbling stones. Footsteps. Water splashing.
A ray of light, intense, than theirs held them fast.
Positioned in the channel clad in waterproof clothing stood Helena Helga. Clutched in her hands was not a firearm. A substantial industrial syringe. Her expression was one of practical determination.
"The irregularity continues " she stated, her tone reverberating through the conduit. "A tenacious variant. Yet each variant possesses a vector. You " she glanced at Giovanni "are the vector. The remedy is eradication."
She advanced a step. Jacques shifted to obstruct her. The limited area worked against his bulk. She was quicker an expert, in her domain.
"That poison, in that syringe " Arthur remarked, his medical expertise shifting to dread. "It matches Osborne's."
"A iteration " Helena stated evenly. "Faster. Neater. A regrettable mishap, for a bunch of city adventurers who inadvertently entered an abandoned area."
She lifted the syringe. Jacques lunged forward. Helena moved aside with agility thrusting the needle toward Giovanni's unguarded neck.
Maria did not yell. She vocalized. One sharp grating discordant tone in a dialect of breaking ice and sliding rocks. She tossed some salt from her pouch into the stream water, near Helena's feet.
The green glow from overhead appeared to distort. The darkness, within the water grew darker. And for a moment the falsehoods etched onto Giovanni's flesh—the faded rose the broken coin, the crying eye—appeared to throw their own subtle blaming shadows onto the moist surfaces encircling them.
Helena Helga, the agent known for her unblemished record hesitated. It wasn't dread of sorcery. A sharp instinctive confusion, as though the atmosphere had turned into a maze of mirrors revealing every dark secret she'd ever hidden. Her strike missed, the syringe dragging across the rock.
At that instant of her instability Jacques' fist struck her wrist. A sharp crack. The syringe tumbled into the water and vanished. Helena hissed, recoiling, her icy eyes at last revealing a flash of anger—and another feeling. The initial breach, in her defenses: irritation.
However the noise of the fight Maria's scream, the yelling—they reverberated upward through the grate.
From above a fresh glow, blue and red flickered across the bars. A voice, loud and authoritative thundered out.
"Gendarmerie! Identify yourselves!"
Raphael Ronald stood atop the embankment guided by his detective's intuition and growing discomfort as he tracked the excavator's path. Looking down through the grate his flashlight added to the cluster casting light on the tableau: the confined semi-submerged group, the enraged wounded woman with a fractured wrist and the odd swirling shadows, on the wall that defied his logical understanding.
Helena noticed him. Her assessment was immediate. The attempt to seize him failed. With a cold look, at Giovanni—a vow of unresolved matters—she spun around and disappeared into the shadowy depths of the passage fading away as quickly as she had come.
They were rescued. Yet as the firefighters sawed through the grate and firm hands lifted them trembling and stunned, into the night air Giovanni glanced back into the shadowy cavity. The maze, on his arm gave a faint throb. The core was no longer solid black. A small invisible speck of his own skin tone appeared at its very center.
They had found a piece of the truth. They had faced the architect. And for the first time, the lie had flinched. But it wasn't over. The maze still had him. And its other architect, the corrupted scholar, was still out there, watching, fascinated by the living specimen that had just survived his trap.