The Adventures of Mademoiselle Mac 2-Book Bundle by Christopher Ward Read Free Book Online Page B

out in the shops, the buildings looked the same, except for the old churches, dark and silent. I was about to give up, thinking what a crazy idea this was, wandering the city by myself at night, when a pair of truck headlights blinded me for a moment before turning down a narrow dead end street. If it hadn’t been for the lights of the truck reflecting off its shiny surface, I would have missed seeing the building altogether. Then I saw the sign in raised letters above the steel doors: SHADOWCORPS .
    The building was like a shadow itself, seeming to have no real shape in the darkened street, just a presence, and not a very pleasant one. The back of the truck opened, and two men got out and began unloading long, heavy-looking identical crates. The doors of Shadowcorps opened, and three more men emerged, one barking orders at the others as they assembled a conveyer belt that led into the building. I tucked myself into a doorway and watched them work with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. As they finished emptying the truck, curiosity took over for the moment, and I inched down the wall beside the truck, hoping that they would be too busy and it would be too dark for them to notice me. Four of them struggled with the conveyer belt, trying to fold it up, and the one giving orders stepped away from the doors and snorted, “Can’t do anything right without me, can you, you bunch of lugs?”
    As they groaned and tugged, I saw my chance and slipped unnoticed into the foyer of Shadowcorps. A vacant reception desk provided the only hiding place. I told my breath to hold steady as the three men rolled their cargo on huge dollies around a corner and out of sight. I didn’t dare look, but I heard elevator doors opening and closing and the sound of wheels and muffled voices, then nothing more. I waited for the silence to last a minute or so before quietly unfolding myself from behind the reception desk. My eyes slowly got used to the dark, cavernous lobby. It was completely empty — no plants, no directory, no signs telling you where to go, no chairs, no lamps, nothing. Even the reception desk was as naked as a landing strip. What kind of business went on here? And what was in those boxes?
    My curiosity pulled me along to a set of elevator doors behind a wall that divided the entry area. The arrow above the gleaming silver doors pointed to minus five, and I stared at the dial, not understanding. With the exception of G for ground, all the floors were marked with a minus. The air seemed to blow around me like I was in a tunnel that went up and down, then it hit me — this building was completely and totally empty. I pushed the “down” button and waited, hoping that no one else was watching the arrow move at the same time as me.
    I held my breath as the doors slid open, revealing what was more like a small room than a conventional elevator. I’m not sure what I would have done if someone had been there to greet me. I got in and pushed -5 . The doors opened quietly onto a small hall. Nearby I could hear the sound of voices and activity and a lot of machinery in action. I peered around the corner into a vast warehouse-sized room with a low ceiling lit by tubes of bluish silver lights. Men in smocks, wearing goggles and holding blowtorches, were working on a piece of criss-crossed metal hundreds of feet long in sections of about thirty feet each. Was this what was being unloaded from the truck tonight?
    At the far end of the room, a cluster of workers, also wearing goggles and heavy, padded gloves, were loading a giant hook into a huge fiery oven. I was so fascinated by this activity, I almost didn’t hear the elevator doors hissing open behind me. I looked around frantically for a hiding place and had to take what I could find. I jumped behind a large rack on wheels, hung with cables, torches, and other tools that didn’t look at all like the ones my grandfather kept in his garage. I