Sorrow Space by James Axler

powered the chopper down.
    “I aim to please,” Grant told him
    Moments later, the three Cerberus warriors were out of the helicopter and making their way into the redoubt. Abandoned for two centuries, the subterranean military complex smelled of damp, with brownish stains running up its concrete walls. The lights were no longer operational, their bulbs long since burned out, so Kane pulled out his xenon-beam flashlight to light their way. The team had used this redoubt’s mat-trans to get here six hours earlier, and had trekked some distance to the initial meeting with Buchs and the sec men, keeping its location hidden.
    Their footsteps echoed from the hard walls, sounding like hammer blows in the grim, warrenlike tunnels. Vast store rooms and living quarters waited beyond the darkness’s edge, their ghostly spaces like half-finished paintings, empty and forgotten.
    It took three minutes for Brigid to lead the team back to the mat-trans chamber located on a lower level of the subterranean complex, her eidetic memory more convenient and efficient than any map.
    The mat-trans chamber took up a dedicated room far below ground level, the unit itself protected by armaglass tinted cherry-red. With their identical hexagonal designs, each mat-trans included armaglass of a different color to make identification easier when one traveled to a new locale. The cherry-colored armaglass shone for a moment under the powerful beam of Kane’s xenon flashlight, transparent red like a laser wall.
    Kane, Grant and Brigid took a few moments to check around the immediate area until they were happy nothing had been altered since they were last here a few hours earlier. Engaging the mat-trans involved willingly allowing the discorporation of one’s physical form; it paid to be certain that nothing had been tampered with.
    “All clear,” Grant confirmed as his partners returned from their own checks.
    Kane tried his Commtact once more before the three of them entered the mat-trans chamber, but still he received no response from Cerberus headquarters. Irritated more than concerned, Kane joined his partners in the teleportation room, mentally preparing himself for the forthcoming journey through the quantum ether as Brigid set things in motion.
    “Cerberus, here we come,” Brigid said as she confirmed their destination coordinates.
    The exterior door locked, and Kane switched off and pocketed the flashlight as the mat-trans powered up. The three Cerberus warriors stood in darkness as hidden mechanisms whirred into action, charging the mat-trans in preparation to send its occupants across a fold in quantum space.
    “Kind of scary, ain’t it?” Grant joked as the mechanical pitch grew higher in the darkness, a deep vibration shaking their bodies.
    Before either Kane or Brigid could answer, the mat-trans chamber came alive with streaks of lightning and an incredible burst of color seemed to overpower their senses.
    An instant later, the three warriors found themselves standing in another location. But they did not see the familiar, sleek walls of the mat-trans chamber in the Cerberus redoubt with its brown-tinted armaglass. Instead, the armaglass was honeycombed like an insect’s eye, its color a smoky black. And the floor and wall tiles were black, too, with dirty streaks across them the rusty color of dried blood. There was a distinctive smell here, like week-old flowers, their fragrance turned cloying and heavy.
    Kane was alert immediately. “Where are we, Baptiste?” he spat, eyes on the chamber door, Sin Eater pistol materializing in his hand.
    “I...I don’t know,” Brigid admitted, raising her shotgun.
    Beside them, Grant had brought his own Sin Eater up, watching the door.
    The lights of the mat-trans flickered for a moment before fading out, leaving just the burning line of their filaments glowing red in the darkness.
    The three of them watched as something moved past the fractured panes of the armaglass, its shadowy silhouette