Stone Soldiers 5: Black Knight Down Read Free Page A

haven't turned back yet."
    The hallway leading from the underground boat dock and tunnel connecting to the nearby Air Force Base also led to an underground facility housed beneath the same black glass building overlooking Biscayne Bay the Detachment called home. Josie and the Colonel headed through the various corridors until they arrived at a large blast door- outside of which a number of soldiers and scientists in labcoats were waiting.
    "Captain?" Kenslir asked.
    A broad-shouldered man of average height, dressed in blue Navy digital camouflage fatigues turned around to face the Colonel and his granddaughter.
    "We've got a problem, sir," Daniel Smith said. Someone just meeting the Captain for the first time might have wondered if that problem was the gray, stony complexion of his petrified skin. But Daniel Smith had been a man made of living stone for several years now- one of several stone soldiers assigned to the Detachment.
    Kenslir looked around at the soldiers, human ones, in full assault gear, nervously clutching M4 assault rifles. "Are they still inside?"
    Smith pointed to the blast door, then one further up the hallway lined with similar doors. "Kane's in hear, Phillips is in the next one."
    "And...?"
    "They haven't changed back yet!" Josie said. A few hours earlier, she'd cried thinking about it- Jimmy Kane was her best friend since childhood. She'd gotten him involved in the supernatural goings-on of the Detachment when she convinced him to help Mark Kenslir when he returned to life a few months ago.
    "Doctor?"
    A soldier in a lab coat, with close cropped hair and a clipboard turned to face the Colonel. He swallowed nervously. "They haven't changed back, sir- we aren't sure why."
    Kenslir set down his duffel bag and walked to the side of the door. He switched on a small display screen so he could see inside the vault on the other side of the door.
    All over the twenty-foot by twenty-foot chamber there were scratches in the thick, concrete walls. Groups of scratches- as if something had been wanting to get out. That something was huddled in a corner, its back- covered in blonde-brown hair- to the camera.
    "Must be the Fountain," Kenslir said. When all he got from the assembled members of the Detachment was blank looks, he explained further. "The curse- it takes back twice what it gives. It's-"
    "Taken his humanity!" the Doctor, Farb- according to his name tag- exclaimed. "That makes perfect sense! The Fountain suppressed the curse before, but after Trumball drained his energy..."
    "Right, right," Kenslir said turning away from Doctor Farb. He looked at Smith. "Go get the titanium restraints."
    "Restraints?" Josie asked, worried.
    "No big deal- I'll just chain him up, and take him back to the Fountain," Kenslir explained. "It'll revert him to human form until we can repetrify him tonight."
    "But I thought you needed a full moon," Josie said as Captain Smith motioned for two soldiers to follow him then headed off down the hall.
    "Technically, the moon is full one night," Dr. Farb explained. "But the nights before and after can appear to the naked eye as full. Most lycanthropes will transform on those nights as well."
    "Dr. Farb, you and Ms. Winters should go," the Colonel said. He was taking off his gunbelt and holsters.
    "I can't leave," Josie said. Jimmy was more than just her best friend.
    "When I open this door to go in, there's every chance he could get out," the Colonel explained. "I'd prefer it if you were on the other side of the blast doors at the end of the corridor."
    "But-!" Josie started to protest.
    "You can watch from the observation level," Dr. Farb suggested. "When he's brought into the chamber."
    "You can all watch from there, Doctor," Kenslir said. "I can handle dipping them in the Fountain. "
    "But, sir..."
    "Major, you and your staff are operating at skeleton levels. We can't afford to lose any more of you, or the Pentagon might shut this project of ours down."
    "Yes, sir," Dr. Farb said. He