Victories Read Free Page B

they weren’t using Scrying Mages to set up an ambush. We’re good, though. I’m guessing they don’t want any of their people getting a peek at the endgame.” She backed and turned the van, and then they were heading down the road again.
    “If the van is your only way of getting around,” Addie said, “and you left it for us, how did you get back here?”
    “Hitchhiked,” Vivian said. “If you were expecting G.I. Joe and his secret underwater base, think again.”
    “‘Knowing is half the battle,’” Burke muttered, quoting. He sounded worried.
    They drove for another hour. Vivian ignored all of their attempts to find out anything about her, about QUERCUS, or about what was going to happen next. They stayed on the back roads, and the countryside looked even more deserted, if possible, than what they’d driven through to get here. If Omaha was somewhere around here, it was doing a good job of hiding.
    At last Vivian turned down a narrow side road, and they could see they were approaching something that looked military.
    And abandoned. There were faded and splintered N O T RESPASSING signs everywhere. The only fence was a tangle of rusted barbed wire, and nothing was paved. Vivian drove through a gap in the coils and up to a cluster of tarpaper shacks that looked like they’d been deserted since before Spirit had been born: doors open or missing entirely, holes in the roof, siding stripped away to expose the framing beneath.
    Spirit’s heart sank. What if this is all some kind of … delusion? What if QUERCUS doesn’t exist? All I have to go on is the Ironkey, and Vivian could’ve made that. She could have been QUERCUS, too. There’s no way to know. And if she’s crazy, if this whole idea of taking out the Shadow Knights is just some kind of … fantasy.…
    Vivian pulled up behind one of the shacks. “End of the line,” she said. When everyone was out of the van, she picked up a camo net hanging from the back of the shack and dragged the loose side over the van.
    “Where are we?” Burke asked, looking around.
    “Nebraska,” Vivian said. “I don’t suppose any of you know history, but a long time ago—before any of us was born—the US was expecting to go to war with Russia.”
    “I have heard of the Cold War,” Loch said dryly.
    “Then you know they figured on fighting it with missiles,” Vivian said. “Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles—ICBMs. They launched from silos. There were hundreds of them—thousands—all over the country. The areas they were located in were called ‘missile fields.’ About thirty years ago, they started decommissioning the missiles. They were obsolete. But there isn’t much you can do with a former missile silo.”
    “Except call it home,” Burke said.
    “Got it in one. Come on.”
    She led them into the shack she’d parked behind. It was completely trashed—broken windows, holes in the roof, leaves, glass, and unidentifiable trash on the floor. There was an old steel desk in one corner, turned on its side. The linoleum floor had been ripped up in places, and underneath was a concrete slab. Addie held her skirt up carefully, and Spirit wished she was wearing something sturdier on her feet than sandals.
    Vivian led them into the second room. It was dark—there were black plastic garbage bags taped over the windows—and in the middle was a large hole in the floor. It looked to Spirit like one of those big storm drains—the opening was more than three feet across, and there were steel rungs set into one side.
    “Who wants to go first?” Vivian said.
    “None of us,” Addie said fervently.
    “I’ll go first,” Loch said. “You next,” he said to Addie. “Be careful in those shoes.”
    Addie made a face.
    Loch walked over and just jumped in. Spirit yelped in dismay until she saw he’d grabbed one of the rungs before he could fall. “There’s lights at the bottom,” he called up, then they heard the scraping of his shoes on the rungs as he