Martin"s Secret
Chapter 16: No Turning Back

They stopped eight feet inside a room with three dusty brick walls and faced the steel entry they had scrambled through a moment earlier.

Standing behind six-feet-square yellow lines bordering thinner diagonal ones painted on the floor, Martin pushed a lever he hoped would re-seal the massive opening. Red-stenciled words above the fortified entry warned that failure to stand clear could result in injury or death. For a moment, the steel-lined door clunked and jerked but eventually began a slow, creaky return to its former airtight position. The air inside the room was as dank as a New Orleans mausoleum but they stood silently in the re-purposed buttery for a moment and listened for any alarms, but the dank room was silent.

“Maybe I should wait out there and keep watch,” she suggested, half teasing.

Just then a red light above the steel door flashed and three, massive, steel rods strategically installed to reinforce it clanked against their strike plates.

“I’m afraid it’s too late” - Martin checked her face for symptoms of panic - “the surveillance loop I programmed into their security system will end soon and twelve cameras somewhere in this immediate vicinity will go live.”

When their eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, they saw a freight-elevator behind a brass accordion-style gate.

Martin picked up the tool bag and briefcase and they slowly made their way to the lift as he systematically inspected walls along the way for surveillance equipment his device might have missed. When satisfied there was no active reconnaissance he yanked the elevator’s brass gates apart, threw the tool bag and briefcase inside and motioned to Jessica. Once they were both on the platform he pushed a dingy, white button situated below two similar buttons. The laggard elevator gave an unnerving jolt before commencing a shaky but steady descent several hundred feet down the dark shaft.

“And I thought we were already in the basement,” chimed Jessica as squeaking cables supporting the platform spooled around their oil-starved pulleys.

“Don’t worry, these old freight-elevators are strong,” said Martin. They’re designed for heavy loads.”

“Was that your artificial intelligence talking or did you just call me fat?” she teased.

“You are a perfect weight. A healthy female specimen in every respect.”

“That’s the worst line I’ve ever heard,” she said. “You’re really off your game today.”

Martin hated that she thought he sounded more like a machine than a man and he was becoming increasingly frustrated over the memory lapses. Maybe she thought he was losing it. He wondered if he was losing it. The strain was taking its toll. More and more she looks at me like a dog in an animal shelter in need of a forever home, he thought.

But Jessica didn’t feel that way. To her, Martin was the knight who’d swept her away from her mundane existence with his nonchalant wit and gentle, masculine charms. The victim of a sinister, government-funded program that was breaking all the rules of humanity, he was exploited by government scientists ostensibly for the benefit of the nation. She believed the system that short-circuited his biological memory viewed him as a necessary sacrifice in a magnificent, bold experiment. He had pushed fusion-technology forward like a soldier charging an enemy bunker - at great cost.

Perhaps some future fusion would be successful but for Martin, time was running out. Like Jessica’s husband, he was trapped behind enemy lines and running low on ammunition. The human resources necessary to reverse the fusion process were failing and if they didn’t penetrate the laboratory within hours he might become an android permanently trapped in a human body - his biological identity erased. Jessica realized that her own well-being was closely tied to Martin’s mental acuity and his CIA experience. She had seen his ruthless assassins at work and knew that she was a secondary target. There was no turning back for either of them and that terrified her.

After what seemed much longer than it actually was, the lift bumped to a halt in front of a long passage. The ten-feet by ten-feet dimply-lit corridor resembled a labyrinth tunnel from a Dungeon game and shrunk to a tiny black rectangle a hundred yards away. There were LED lamps installed periodically beneath wood handrails on both walls that offered just enough light for them to see the sealed concrete floor.

“Wear this wireless earpiece in case we get separated. We need to keep our voices down from here on,” whispered Martin.

“Separated?” she asked.

“Just in case,” he reassured.

Jessica eyed him nervously as she pulled her smooth, black hair back to fit the device around her ear. When he turned it on, she winced.

“Ow! It’s too loud, my footsteps are like sonic booms,” she yelled.

“Hold your finger on the lower button until the volume is comfortable,” he coached. “They’re very powerful.”

“Thanks for the warning!” she quipped, and frowned.

“My bad!” he replied.

“That briefcase is the Noah’s Ark of electronics, two of everything,” she kidded.

Martin grinned but placed an index finger vertically against his lips less their voices thwart a stealthy intrude.

“I need to double check some settings to be sure this audio equipment isn’t transmitting,” he whispered and opened the briefcase.

“Okay,” she mumbled.

Suddenly Martin jerked the amplifier out and fell to his knees, covering both ears with his hands.

When he woke, two visibly shaken women were bent over him anxiously calling his name. When his double-vision cleared, he was relieved to see only Jessica’s worried face.

“How long?” he asked.

“Ten minutes give or take,” she informed.

He could see that she was fighting panic.

“Don’t leave me again,” she pleaded, even though she knew it was never his choice.

“I’ll try not to,” Martin responded as he rubbed his forehead and attempted to stand.

Jessica got in front of him and using both hands hooked her thumbs and index fingers under his shoulders to keep him from toppling face first on the gritty concrete.

“Easy, big guy, take a minute to get your legs back.”

Martin’s equilibrium soon stabilized and his vision sharpened. He stood and leaned his head from side to side to test his balance before grabbing the tool bag and briefcase.

“Martin, these tunnels aren’t the work of Cigar City mobsters. They didn’t have the technology a hundred years ago,” said Jessica.

“No, this isn’t the Cigar City underground in library books. They probably utilized some existing passageways to minimize the noise of shallow tunneling but this maze was built by a different kind of organized mob,” he said.

She attempted to put her hand on his forehead and check his temperature but Martin waved her off and they began their journey into the gloomy featureless passage.

Startled, Jessica screamed at the loud flapping above them and again when something touched her neck. She saw it in the corner of her eye and then it was gone. She had covered her face and bent forward and the noise faded and dissolved into echoes.

“Just Bats,” Martin stated emphatically hoping to calm his partner.

“Just bats?” Jessica recurred, obviously undone by the experience. “Martin, I hate bats! I’m literally chirotophobic!

“I could have said it was a swarm of butterflies,” he joked.

Jessica slapped his arm and peered warily down the corridor looking as though she might start crying.

He removed his earpiece and gently pulled her close.

She put both arms around him and laid her head on his chest then lifted her head and kissed him softly on the lips.

“I’m okay. I just don’t want us to end up like Romeo and Juliet.”

Martin looked at her quizzically.

“Romeo and Juliet,” she repeated. “You don’t remember them?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Wait, what kinds of music were we talking about in that restaurant in Colorado?” she pressed.

“Colorado?” Martin repeated.

“I’m afraid they just snatched more of your memory,” said Jessica.

“We have to hurry,” he said in a suddenly urgent tone. The two jaunted a hundred yards where they happened on another vault-like door. The massive, steel entry bore a classic black-and-yellow, pie-shaped nuclear warning that was boldly advertised.

“They really don’t like visitors, do they?” chimed Jessica.