25. Adina

25

ADINA

I t didn't take long for me to realize two very important things about the Vault. Three, really, but the first two were the most pressing.

One—this place was heavily defended. I'd barely ventured a hundred feet past the stairwell into the depths of the storage facility, and I'd already encountered three booby traps, one of them lethal.

The air was thick with tension, every step a potential dance with death.

Two—this place was massive. If the echo of my footsteps was any indicator, it had to be at least as large as the plaza nearest to my little hovel—ten thousand square feet, easily. If I had to search all that with nothing but the scanner's feeble light, I'd inevitably get trapped or injured.

"What's taking so long?" Jeffry's impatient voice thundered down the stairs, making me flinch.

"I'm trying not to get killed here," I shouted back. "It's pitch black. I can't see more than five feet in front of me."

"Turn on the lights, you imbecile!"

I rolled my eyes. "How?"

"There must be a switch somewhere. Should be by the entrance."

Right, like I hadn't looked there. "Didn't see it," I called back, but he had a point—there had to be a central lighting system here. If it was still functioning.

"I'll, ah, check again!" I whispered to Bingo, "Find the fuse box."

It took several long minutes and two more traps—one set off by my fleet-tentacled lookout and the other, a nasty neck-height tripwire/garrote I nearly blundered into—before I managed to get the lights working. It had to be an ancient solar system because even now, the illumination was weak, but as the corners of this place were gradually revealed, I came smack up against the third important realization about the Vault.

All of this security was not just about making the life of any potential thief difficult. It was protecting a treasure trove beyond all imagination.

The place was filled with technology I'd never seen before, as well as some pieces I recognized from museums or the homes of the peerage. Crates upon crates of special fuels, battery cells, and packaged food that promised no expiration date.

How is that even possible?

There were stacks of paper money—useless now—as well as raw metals and piles of precious goods—gold, gemstones, ancient books. I felt that different people with vastly different priorities had hidden their treasures here.

Now, all I had to do was find the lamp, but it would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. There was nothing for it but to be methodical. I started by the wall and began to search in a grid pattern, leaving no box unopened.

"Hurry up, you useless wench!" Jeffry called, his voice grating on my nerves.

"I'm going as fast as I can," I snapped back. "Maybe if you want this to go faster, you should think about helping me!"

"I won't be doing that. Someone needs to be on the lookout."

"That's what I thought," I muttered under my breath.

Jeffry was a coward, and his only power came from the ring on his finger. He didn't want anyone to find out about this place, so he snuck me out of the palace and flew the craft himself instead of taking guardians with him.

I continued working methodically down one wall, and when I reached a crate filled with dusty relics of a forgotten time, my attention was snagged by an unexpected find.

A flying machine. A hovercraft, one of the ancient models, was still plugged into the wall, and its battery was still charging because the console was dimly glowing.

"Wow," I breathed, running my hands over the shiny edge of it.

Modern hovercrafts were basically big toys, suitable for short trips between the homes of the rich. Hardly anyone had access to the motors needed to keep one aloft for long travel. Nowadays, the preferred mode of flying was personal balloons. But this relic had the kind of motors that no one made anymore, hard-wearing and meant for heavy-duty, long-distance flights.

What I wouldn't give to try it out, but I had a job to do. Reluctantly, I left the hovercraft alone and kept looking.

I was shocked when I stumbled across the lamp not ten steps later. It was right there, on the floor, next to a box full of the forever-food.

"There you are," I whispered, bending down and picking it up. I checked it against the hologram image—yep, this was it. But what did it do? What allure did an old piece of simple tech like this hold for someone like Jeffry?

Londabad made lamps that were a hundred times more beautiful than this and probably at least as efficient. This one didn't even have a holographic projector, just a single button on the side, probably only good for turning it on and off.

"Have you found it?" Jeffry yelled down, sounding impatient.

Hmm... the moment of truth. Should I let him know I had it? That would hasten a confrontation I wasn't ready for.

On the other hand...

"I won't let you have water until you bring me the lamp!"

Yep, great, definitely not going to be doing that. "I'm still looking!"

"Look faster!"

Oh, I'd look all right. For a weapon that would take that asshole out and give me a chance of getting out alive and back to Londabad. I tied the lamp to my back and then continued my search.

I spent another hour looking around and found a lot of big weapons, like the freaking cannon that I had just pulled a drop cloth off, which could shoot through mountains. But I didn't find any small personal weapons.

"A storm is moving in," I heard Jeffry shout. For once, he sounded more than annoyed—there was a hint of fear in his voice. "We'll be inundated with sand; this crevice could fill up. You need to get back here now!"

Shit, I did. There was no more time to waste. I picked up Bingo. "Go ahead of me and defend us if he tries something," I whispered.

Bingo beeped reassuringly, then went invisible and skittered away.

I took a deep breath, then looked around for one of the flashier, more recognizable traps I'd seen down there. These sent a dart that was tipped with some sort of contact explosive out at you—noisy, but they didn't even break down the crates. They were deterrents, nothing more. I picked up a tool of some kind, hefted it for a moment, then threw it at the trigger.

BOOM!

I coughed dramatically, a few gasps thrown in for good measure. "I—I'm coming," I groaned. "I've got it, I've—I've got it, I'm coming." There. Now, he'd think I was wounded and hopefully not be as on the defensive with me as he could be.

I moved slowly to the stairs, miming dragging a limb, then slumped over and fell onto the bottom one.

"I set off a trap," I cried up to Jeffry, who was staring at me with an expression of pure greed.

The wind was whipping his clothes around so hard I was surprised they hadn't been torn right off—at least he hadn't lied about the storm. "It was too well protected..."

"Bring it to me," he commanded, holding one arm toward me.

The other was very firmly behind his back. He had something back there, something I wasn't meant to see. A weapon. He was going to try to kill me as soon as I handed over the lamp. I needed to delay that for as long as possible until Bingo could get the weapon, or I could distract him and get it myself.

I limped up the stairs, one hand pressed to my abdomen until I was almost within touching distance. Where was Bingo? I couldn't hand over the lamp yet. I collapsed dramatically a few stairs down.

"Help me out," I pleaded.

"Give me the lamp first," Jeffry yelled.

"Just pull me up! Then I'll give you the lamp, and we can leave together."

I was surprised that he wasn't trying to use the genie ring to control me, but he must have figured out that it didn't work on me as effectively as it worked on the king. Evidently, James and I had more in common than we had suspected.

Jeffry's eyebrows drew together sharply as he glowered, no doubt annoyed that I wasn't falling into his evil plot like an innocent lamb.

As his hidden hand began to emerge from behind his back, I got my feet beneath me, ready to charge him. Then—he lifted the weapon. It was an actual antique gun, which I had thought only existed in museums, and I held my breath as I expected him to fire at me, but my trusty sidekick came to my rescue, sinking his tentacles into the hand holding the gun and pulling Jeffry's fingers back as hard as he could until he dropped the weapon.

Unfortunately, Bingo wasn't very strong. He couldn't hold Jeffry back for long, and a few seconds later, the man shook his hand hard enough to send Bingo flying past me down the stairs.

By then, though, I had my hands on the gun and pointed it straight at Jeffry.

"Curse you!" Jeffry hissed when he saw me. "Just give me the lamp, and I'll leave you be!"

"Not before you take me back to Londabad," I said, but a moment later, a gust of wind thick with sand poured over us.

Jeffry lunged, trying to wrench the gun out of my hands. I managed to hold on to it, but it went off, the bullet going straight into the control panel just inside the stairs. Above us, the door began to slide inexorably shut as more sand rained down.

We were going to be buried alive.

With an inarticulate cry of fury, Jeffry scrambled up the stairs and threw himself out into the storm. A moment later, the door closed with a resounding thud.

Damn. I was trapped in the Vault.