Part 16

The only warning was a distant sound... like the blast of a gigantic horn, and a stabbing pain in Owen's right hand.

They'd been maneuvering their way through the labyrinth of odd corridors... none of which had walls that were parallel or intersections that were perpendicular. Maurice was in the lead. The bathrobe-clad man managed to direct the group from a few paces behind Vince, who was obviously unaware that he was on point: the first to die in case of trouble. Steve and Kevin buzzed around Maurice like flies, probing him and each other for answers that they knew no one had. Frank walked behind them, eying everything with nervous attention and with both hands firmly in his pockets.

Owen, Brad, and Kyle brought up the rear, with a gap of several yards between them and Frank's back. Brad was a talker. He and Kyle kept up their own conversation, with Brad providing most of the effort... mostly irrelevant questions and observations of the blatantly obvious. Owen ignored them both, keeping his own attention divided between mapping out their progress in his head and figuring out what it was they supposed to be doing.

That they were here for some purpose was obvious. But what?

There was a unexpected lull in the conversation, with Brad truncating his last sentence with a sudden-

"OWW!"

From up ahead came shouts of-

"Hey!"
"Ouch!"
"What the FU-"

Sudden bolts of pain shot up the length of Owen's arm. It felt like someone had taken a shard of broken glass and was stabbing the palm of his right hand... deeply and repeatedly.

"AHH, FUCK!"

It wasn't just him. Everyone was shouting and either flailing their arm... their right arm... or clutching at their wrists in an attempt to block the pain. Owen clamped his fingers around his wrist and squeezed, but it did no good. Pain continued to stab its way up his arm toward his shoulder, radiating from a silver-dollar sized spot in the center of his palm. When he looked at his hand, Owen expected to see a bloody wound with bones protruding through his flesh.

What he saw instead was a red symbol carved into his skin... lines and curves that looked familiar, yet somehow different from something similar he had before. The shape had been cut into his flesh... cut deep... but the red he saw was not blood. The wound was glowing... pulsing in time with the bolts of pain, light glaring through the wound from somewhere else-

-and then the sound came.

A horn, but so huge and monstrous that Owen' couldn't conceive of anything... human or not... that was large enough to blow it. A single sound so loud that it brought a scream to Owen's lips... a scream that he couldn't even hear. And he wasn't the only one. Silent shouts and howls of panic beamed from the faces around him, but all he could hear was the horn... the horn... the DAMNED HORN!

"MAKE IT STOP!!!!" Bradley screamed. "MAKE IT STOP!" Owen read the words on his lips, but could hear nothing over the impossible note. The glowing wound in his hand all but forgotten, Owen clamped his hands to his ears and fell to his knees, as if that would somehow make him a smaller target for the sonic assault.

And then the walls began to move.