Read Online The Shroud of A'Ranka (Brimstone Network Trilogy) by Thomas E. Sniegoski - Free Book Online

himself up from his chair. “Gonna give this a shot,” he said, swaying slightly as he retrieved his crutches from the back of his wheelchair.
    “Are you sure, son?” his father asked him.
    “I’ll be fine,” he reassured his father. “And if I get too tired, Bogey can carry me.”
    “Sure, and Drackleflints will fly out of my butt,” the Mauthe Dhoog grumbled, heading for the door.
    “Drackleflints?” Emily and Dez repeated at the exact same time.
    They descended the stairs, floor after floor, and aftera while, Bram started to notice a strange sensation in his head.
    “Hey, Stitch,” he called. “Do you feel that?”
    Stitch stopped, turning upon the steps to look back at Bram. “I was wondering when you were going to notice.”
    “And?” Bram asked.
    “We’ve gone from one reality into another.”
    “Yeah,” Bogey agreed, holding on to the railing. “I thought something might’ve been up.”
    They finally reached the bottom, where a sign over a large metal door announced RECORDS .
    Stitch hauled open the heavy door and held it open so they all could enter.
    “Oh wow,” was all Bram could say.
    For as far as the eye could see there were shelves, and on those shelves there were boxes, and where there weren’t shelves, there were filing cabinets.
    “Can you guess why we’re in a pocket dimension?” Stitch asked.
    “More room?”
    “Precisely,” the big man answered. “If they’d tried to use a room beneath the castle for storage, it would have been filled in a few days. Pocket dimensions provideperfect storage places as long as nothing is already stored or living there.”
    “Oh, crap,” Bogey said. “We’re gonna be here for years.”
    “We better get started then,” Bram said, pushing the Mauthe Dhoog toward a section of shelves. “If we’re lucky, there will be some sort of order that we can figure out and we won’t have to search every single box and file cabinet.”
    Emily stared at him.
    “What?” Bram asked.
    “When have any of us ever been that lucky?” the girl asked.
    He hated to admit it, but she had a point.
    They all headed off to different parts of the vast storage room. It was tough to see exactly what they were doing, the only light provided by small emergency lights that cast everything in a soft red hue, like blood dispersing in water.
    Bram took his first box from the shelf and was carefully going through the first of the files. He was amazed at the amount of cases investigated by the Network in just this box alone. It was incredible, and a little bit daunting.
    He and his team had to now pick up that slack, and the idea that the world was now a much more dangerousplace since the event made him seriously consider going back to the Himalayas in search of P’Yon Kep and asking for his room back.
    The records room was suddenly filled with light.
    Bram left his work, walking up the aisle to join the others who were looking at the ceiling, at long, fluorescent bulbs that burned in the panels above them.
    “Somebody must’ve paid the bill,” Dez said, leaning on his crutches, a crumpled file folder beneath his arm.
    They heard a door open somewhere in the distance and the sound of someone approaching.
    “Much better,” Stitch said as he emerged from one of the countless rows. “I found a small emergency generator in a back storage room and fired ’er up.”
    Gradually they all returned to the work they had started, the floors littered with folders and stray bits of paper, but Bram still couldn’t find what he was looking for.
    His eyes burning and the muscles in his back starting to cramp, Bram got up from the floor to stretch. Walking to the opposite end of the row, he saw Emily sitting off by herself in the distance, a large stack of file folders beside her as she dug into the open box for another handful.
    She had a look on her face that told him that somethingwasn’t right. He headed toward her. Although they hadn’t known each other very long, he liked