It was Carmen who moved first after the terror in the tunnel. She rummaged in the survival kit and found what she was looking for. Flicking on the torch, she cast its beam round and allowed it too settle on George, Rick and Charlie in turn. Pale, drawn faces blinked back at her in the circles of harsh yellow light that the torch cast. Charlie and Rick looked bizarrely similar, their broken noses twisted at the same angle and the lower half of their faces smeared with bright red blood.

“You’ve a flashlight, Carmen?” Rick said. “Thank God for that.”

“Point it over here, girl,” rumbled George, who then swore when she directed the beam in his face. “Not me! There!” His finger pointed back at the door. “Let’s check it’s secure and that those…things…aren’t going to break in anytime soon.”

In the weak light of the torch they quickly gained an impression of where they were. A wide corridor with doors coming off it at intervals stretched out before them. There seemed to be some sort of mesh, or fencing, at the end opposite the entrance. It was hard to tell in the feeble light of the torch exactly what was there.

George finished checking that the bunker’s main door was really secure and turned back to the group. “That locking wheel ran real smooth for something that’s been out of use for, what, seventy years?”

“I’d noticed that too,” added Rick. “Perhaps Iphigenia and Frankenstein loosened it up a little?”

“I don’t think so, it would still be stiff. That wheel ran as smooth as butter when I closed the door. Is this place in use?”

“Not that I could see. When I got down here earlier I had to pretty much tear my way in to that tunnel. No-one's been this way for years.”

“What I don’t understand is what happened to my gun,” continued George. “It just disintegrated in my hands. One minute, I’m standing there with a fully functioning rifle, next minute it’s falling apart in my hands and looks like crap! Anyway, who the heck is Trev and what on Earth were you and Charlie going on about in that tunnel?”

“George, it’s like this…” Rick gently steered George out of earshot and proceeded to have a hurried, whispered conversation. Whilst the two men talked, Carmen went to Charlie, who was sat on the floor with his head in his hands.

“Charlie? What happened out there?” she said gently, sitting beside him on the hard concrete.

“I don’t know, Carmen.” Charlie felt as if he had lost Trev all over again. Somehow he knew that something terrible had happened and he had been unable to stop it. What staggered him was that he knew that Trev had known what he was going to do, when he walked towards the blue lights. He had known that they would take him and yet he had still done it. Charlie also knew that Trev had done it for them, perhaps hoping to lead the blue lights away from Charlie, Carmen and their fathers. The fact that he had failed was immaterial to Charlie, it simply made him love Trev all the more. Is it love I feel? Why does it hurt so much? I was just getting used to having Trev back in my life and now he’s gone again. It’s just not fair! His brother was gone and in a sudden rush of emotion, the emptiness within him was filled with burning rage. He threw himself up onto his feet and rushed to the bunker entrance. “Why?” He screamed at the top of his lungs, battering the cold steel surface of the door with his hands. “Why did you have to go and die? Why did you die and leave me on my own?” Just as quickly as it had come, the fury within left him and he sagged to the floor, sobbing.

Rick, Carmen and George approached the distraught boy as if he was an unexploded bomb. Wrapping their arms around him, and each other, they held the shaking boy close until, spent, Charlie’s tears dried and the last quivers subsided.

“We love you, Charlie,” Rick said. “Everything will be all right. Really everything will be all right.” He hugged the boy closer.

“How can it?” Charlie cried quietly. “Trev’s gone!”

“You have a talent that very few people have, Charlie. It’s allowed you to see your friend when others can’t. You’ve been able to spend more time with him when you really should not have been able to.” Rick stroked Charlie's hair. “Did he change each time you saw him?”

“Yeah,” Charlie muttered, “He kind of looked ill. Really tired.”

“Stretched? Worn?” Charlie nodded and Rick continued, “It showed that he was struggling. When you pass over to the other side - when you die - you’re expected to go and there’s a real strong pull from the other side to get you there. Sometimes people get stuck on this side. They’re what people call ghosts or spirits or spectres. They kind of drift about not quite in this world and not quite in the next and all the while there’s this force pulling at them that kind of bleeds away the essence of who they are. They become a shell of what they were. It’s not pretty to see if you loved that person.”

“How do you know all this?” Charlie asked.

Rick shrugged, “I’ve met a few people in my time like this. The talent you have you share with me. I see dead people too.”

“So did…did Trev pass over out there?”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never seen spirits like those blue lights before and I‘ve never seen anyone pass over in a flash of light. That’s something for the movies! I think Trev was forced to do something by those lights.”

“Do you think he’s gone?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so but I can’t be sure, Charlie. If there’s one consolation, he’s already dead so they can’t really hurt him. But they can hurt us.” Rick paused for a moment and pressed his fingers into his eyes, as if trying to rub away the weariness and pain of the day. “You heard them on the other side of that door. We do not want to be here if they come back and get in. We have to get moving. I think that the secret to getting off this island is going to be here in this bunker and the sooner we get moving the sooner we can get away. Do you think you can do it?”

In the torchlight, Charlie only say the merest hint of his father’s eyes, hidden as they were in the deep shadows beneath his brows, yet it was enough to give him the strength to push on.. Within them he found new resolution, love and kindness, which in turn filled him with determination. He nodded, “Yeah…yes! Let’s go.”

The party got to their feet and collected their meagre belongings that lay scattered about.

***

“What were they talking about, Dad?” Carmen asked George.

“Something I’ve seen over the years that I’ve come to respect,” George answered. “There’s a whole world out there that exists within our own that I can never see, nor you either, by the sounds of it. Rick can see things other people can’t and it’s saved my backside a few times. In his day he could call on the help of some pretty strange things.”

“So you believe it too?”

“Oh yes! Before you were born we went on some pretty wild trips treasure hunting and we were good at it because Rick had help from the spirit world. I’ve seen a few things that just can’t be explained any other way.”

“I think I know what you mean. Charlie’s friend Trev helped us escape from two of those men!”

“That’s a lucky break. Remember it well. Spirits don’t choose to help the living everyday of the week.”

***

Rick quickly called them all together and outlined his plans for proceeding into the bunker, “I know you know this is dangerous so I won’t patronise you both but the way I see it is this. The solution to our problems is here in this bunker. Iphigenia Savanarolova is a poisonous pit viper and should be avoided at all costs but she is going to be in the way of getting out of here. So keep your ears sharp and your eyes peeled. If I say run, you break the Olympic record. No arguments. Iphigenia is not to be trifled with. Do not stop for anything, not me, not George, either of you. You must promise me that.”

The children nodded and muttered agreement rather reluctantly. Agreement reached, the party made their way carefully down the dark corridor, heading towards the fenced off end. On the way they investigated a couple of the rooms that led off the corridor and were astounded to find the contents looking absolutely pristine. It was as if the occupants had simply popped out to get a cup of coffee and turned the lights off.

“How can this be?” Rick thought aloud. “This bunker’s been sealed for years.” He went to a desk that was placed against the wall of what had to be an office of some kind. Rummaging through the few items that lay on the desk’s top, he eventually picked up a pencil. “Look at this,” he said. “It’s as if it has just been sharpened. Look at the wood around the point. It’s clean. It hasn’t discoloured even slightly.”

“Can you see anything here that’s useful, Rick? Like a gun. When I run into Miss Savanarolova again I don’t want to write her a love letter,” George asked.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything like that in here. Just look at all this stuff though, it’s like a shipping office,” Rick rifled through a pile of papers. “I never did learn Japanese. I’ve can’t be sure what any of these documents are, or mean, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were shipping manifests. Records of what was sent here from the Home Islands, I suppose.” He wafted one piece of paper full of closely packed Japanese script arranged vertically on the page.

“What is this place, Rick?” Carmen asked.

“I don’t know but I can guess. During World War Two Japan had a number of secret scientific research units dotted all over the Empire. Most of them developed some form of weapon or furthered science that could be used to produce weapons. Different units specialized in different weapons research, though there was a lot of crossover. Some of them conducted some pretty despicable experiments. The most infamous of them was Unit 731, which performed horrific tests on humans. In fact they developed biological weapons that killed over half a million Chinese people. After the War, Unit 731’s research was so heavily classified by the Americans that details of it only emerged recently. It’s a pretty sensitive issue between modern Japan and her neighbours, there’s still a lot of anger over what was done in the name of Imperial Japan seventy years ago.” Rick sighed and ran a hand through his hair, “I guess that we’ve stumbled on one of these secret bases where research was carried out. Goodness knows what we’re going to find out here.”

“Rick, we’d better be careful,” George said. “If this place is like what you’ve just said, with everything so well preserved, we’re going to have to tread pretty lightly.”

“Yeah,” Rick agreed grimly. “Whatever you do, everyone, just don’t touch anything if we find a lab! You don’t know what it might contain. The last thing we want is anyone accidentally unleashing bubonic plague.”

On this hardly reassuring note the group left the office and continued on their way down the entrance corridor. The fenced area that they had seen earlier turned out to be the lobby for a freight elevator. With only the weak beam from the emergency flashlight to illuminate their way Rick was worried about the batteries running out, leaving them in darkness. After a short search in the lobby area, he found what he was after. Located on a door adjacent to the lift shaft were emergency lamps, hanging on hooks next to fire extinguishers. Picking one off its hook, Rick tested the switch and, after a nervous moment expecting it not to work at all, he grinned in response to the much brighter light that flooded the freight elevator lobby. It looked like he was beginning to get used to the idea of the strangely perfect preservation of the artefacts in the bunker.

***

Whilst Rick and George were organising themselves, Charlie was dwelling on the events of the last hour. So much had happened, from Savanarolova’s appearance, capture and escape, to the desperate flight from the mysterious blue lights, to Trev’s apparent self-sacrifice. Yet one unpleasant thought kept going round and round in his head and that related to Savanarolova’s accusation of Rick’s responsibility for the death of a friend.

Charlie had heard enough from his mum to know this had occurred but he was not foolish enough to take Savanarolova’s charge at face value. He had long experience of being falsely accused of some crime or other feloney, so he wasn’t about to paint his father guilty on the say so of such a deeply troubling person as the Savanarolova woman. However, he did want answers but he did not really want to talk to Rick about it. Somehow he knew that Rick would not be all that forthcoming on the matter. George, on the other hand, might prove to be a more useful mine of information.

“There’s nothing on this level that we can really see is going to help us,” Rick said at last. He scratched his chin and continued, “George and I are convinced that we need to keep going to find a way out of this. We can’t go back but we can go down. There’s an access stairwell here by the elevator shaft. We’re going to go down it and explore but we are going to do it quietly. You’ve met Iphigenia Savanarolova now and you’ve seen that she’s pretty ruthless. Keep quiet and stay out of the way if we find her, and it’s probable that we will find her. Remember, she and her friend are armed.”

With that, Rick strode to the stairwell door and opened it carefully. When he was happy that a hail of bullets was not going to spray up out of the dark he crept down, his solitary beam of light from the lantern bobbing about as he descended. Quietly, Carmen, Charlie and George followed.

The stairwell was wide, circular and deep. Trudging down in the darkness, Charlie could easily imagine a host of ghostly stalkers keeping pace with them, just out of sight, as they completed each turn of the staircase. His senses had attuned to the lack of light and he begun to hear much more than he had been aware of when they entered the bunker. Most of all, as they headed further down, a deep, steady hum, like that of heavy machinery, seemed to rumble up through the staircase, through the soles of his shoes and into him.

“What’s that noise?” he whispered to George.

“I don’t know, Charlie. It could be a power generator. It’s definitely getting louder. Good thing, really, it’ll cover up any noise we make,” George replied. “Mind you, if it's a generator, why isn't there any power to the lights?”

“George, can I talk to you about something?” Charlie ventured.

“Hmm? Sure.”

“When we were outside, that woman said that Dad got someone killed. I guess I just want to know more about it.”

George paused on the stairwell. He put out a huge hand onto Charlie’s shoulder, which stopped Charlie dead in his tracks. “Charlie,” he sighed tiredly, “what that woman was talking about happened long time ago but there’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of it. I know it’s the same for your dad too.”

“But what happened?”

“Why not ask your dad? Don’t be shy, Charlie. He’ll understand.”

“I don’t know. I suppose I want to know what happened from someone else who was there. Someone who saw what happened, you know, but wasn’t involved.”

“Involved? We were all involved,” George said. He hesitated for a moment, watching Rick’s light descending further into the deep. “The boy Miss Savanarolova was talking about was a research student who was tagging along on an expedition we were running for the British Museum, which was working in partnership with the National Museum of Tajikistan. We were trying to recover the contents of a tomb of one of Alexander the Great’s generals before some criminal gang stripped it bare. Huw was a nice guy and we all liked him but he was incredibly reckless. For a bright guy he didn’t get people and that in some situations you have to take account of their views. The locals thought we were tomb robbers and that we weren’t going to deliver the tomb’s treasures to the museum. We were penned in to our camp by an angry mob and Rick had to negotiate with a local headman to keep it from getting nasty. “Huw thought he’d act on his own and break out to get to the tomb and ensure that the treasures were safe. We found out and we managed to persuade the headman to let us go and get Huw before he ran into anyone he shouldn’t. When we got to him he had already gone into the tomb and had been found by local people acting as sentries. He was dragged out and they were going to kill him there and then but …” George paused, unsure whether Charlie would believe him.

“Yes?” Charlie pushed.

“But your dad simply waded into the middle of this crowd of people armed with goodness knew what. I’ve never seen anything braver or madder. He grabbed Huw by the scruff of the neck and threw him into our four by four. I floored it and we sped outta there.”

“If Dad saved him how come Huw died?”

“We were stopped at a roadblock further down the track. The headman had a change of heart and decided to give us a royal kicking to remind us who was boss. There was a tussle, a gun was fired and Huw caught a round in the chest. Everything went crazy after that. I don’t remember an awful lot apart from waking up in the snow whilst being dragged by your dad. He saved me that night. He’d dragged me over two kilometres to find shelter and help. He did this despite having broken ribs, jaw and nose!”

“His nose? It’s not a lucky part of the body for him is it?” Charlie said ruefully.

“Or you. Your dad didn’t abandon Huw. He had to make a choice. He thought that Huw was dead and I needed a lot of help in a place crawling with people who wanted us dead too. I can never forget what he did for me. Nor what he did for Huw.”

“What, what do you mean? I thought he’d been left behind.” Charlie was puzzled. What had his father done?

“Once he was sure I was secure, he went back for Huw’s body. He wanted to be able to return something to Huw’s parents at the very least. When he got back to Huw he was amazed to find him still alive. Rick, your dad I mean, knew he couldn’t move him; he was just too far gone. So he stayed with him, kept him company, in the dark and the cold until he passed away. Rick never left Huw to die alone, he would never leave anyone. If you want proof, get your dad to show you his frostbite scars sometime.”

“He got frostbite!”

“He lost two toes,” George stated blandly. He nudged Charlie gently, “Look, the others are way ahead. We’d better catch up.”

As they hurried after the others, going round and round the steel staircase, making their way down, Charlie reflected on what George had told him. He felt a fool for even having the merest doubt about his father. He knew deep down that his dad would never have left anyone and he could feel his face flush with shame at even having thought so. A lump formed in his throat that swelled to such an extent it hurt. Rick had stayed with Huw, stayed with him for the long, lonely journey into the dark. Tears started in the corners of his eyes, which he wiped with the back of his hand. He suddenly felt a wave of great affection, or even love, for the father he had known for only a few short weeks.

Rick and Carmen were waiting at the bottom of the stairwell. George and Charlie clattered down the last few steps and joined them. Their lamps reflected off the walls of the cylindrical space and dimly lit the scene. A heavy steel door faced the foot of the stairs.

“You took your time,” Rick said.

“Oh, just stopped for a chat with Charlie,” George muttered as he walked up to Rick, then added on seeing Rick's one raised eyebrow, “Nothing to worry about.” The eyebrow rose even higher. “Really, nothing to worry about!”

A reedy voice piped up from the shadows beneath the staircase, “Nothing to worry about? Boys, you've got everything to worry about.”

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