Following the address Clarice Starling had given him, Axel Vance drove across Miami until he stopped in front of the Dolphin Hotel. The building looked expensive enough that Axel instinctively checked the sign twice, because its polished stone exterior and old-fashioned luxury seemed completely out of place compared with the increasingly chaotic streets outside. He could only conclude that the FBI had a much more generous travel budget than the Miami Police Department.
Compared with Axel’s cramped apartment, the Dolphin might as well have been a palace. The moment he entered, the noise of Miami seemed to disappear behind the heavy glass doors, replaced by soft piano music and the quiet murmur of wealthy guests. Well-dressed men and women sat beneath chandeliers with cocktails in hand while cigar smoke and expensive perfume mixed in the air.
A young bellman wearing a neat vest approached almost immediately. "Welcome to the Dolphin Hotel, sir. Can I help you with anything?" Axel glanced around once more before answering that he was visiting a guest, and the bellman politely offered to show him toward the elevators.
Before they could move, raised voices suddenly broke through the calm atmosphere near the front desk. Axel turned and saw a middle-aged man arguing with an increasingly uncomfortable hotel employee. The guest leaned against the counter and said firmly, "I already told you. I want Room 1408."
The clerk tried to keep his voice professional. "Mr. Enslin, that room is unavailable."
"Then get your manager."
Axel’s attention sharpened immediately.
Mike Enslin.
That name stirred another memory from his previous life. Mike Enslin was the skeptical writer who made a career investigating supposedly haunted places while refusing to believe that any of them were genuinely supernatural. In the story Axel remembered, the man’s stubborn decision to spend a night in Room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel had ended very badly.
Axel glanced toward the bellman beside him. "Is there something special about that room?"
The young man immediately looked uncomfortable. "I’m fairly new, sir, so I don’t know the full story. I was only told that management has strict instructions that nobody is supposed to stay in 1408."
Axel looked back toward Mike Enslin, who appeared fully prepared to argue with the entire hotel staff until somebody surrendered a key. "Interesting guest."
The bellman gave a nervous smile. "Yes, sir."
"And an interesting hotel."
Axel decided not to interfere. He already had one mysterious cult, several escaped serial killers, a strange FBI investigation, and an unexplained supernatural skill to worry about. If Mike Enslin was determined to walk voluntarily into a haunted hotel room, that particular problem could wait.
The bellman escorted Axel upstairs, and a few minutes later he stopped outside Clarice’s room. Axel knocked twice and waited until a cautious voice answered from inside. "Who is it?"
"Axel. Your favorite local cop."
There was a pause before the lock clicked.
Clarice opened the door wearing casual clothes, and her damp hair made it obvious she had recently showered. Surprise crossed her face when she saw Axel standing there so late, but she immediately stepped aside. "Come in."
Her hotel room was exactly what Axel expected from her. A suitcase had been placed neatly near the wall, clothing was folded rather than scattered around, and several investigative reports were arranged across the desk in careful stacks. Even away from Quantico, Clarice apparently maintained the same disciplined habits.
She poured Axel a glass of water and handed it to him. "Something happened?"
"Not yet."
Clarice raised an eyebrow.
Axel walked toward the window and looked down at the street below before continuing. A group of young men stood beneath streetlights holding wanted posters clipped from newspapers, stopping pedestrians every few minutes to compare their faces with photographs. Chief Woody’s bounty announcement was still spreading madness through Miami.
As Axel watched, someone shouted at the far end of the block.
Several men suddenly ran from an alley.
A loud crash followed.
Then gunfire.
Clarice came to the window and stared downward as people scattered across the street. "This city is getting worse by the hour."
"That’s why I’m here."
Axel turned away from the glass. "We finally have something connecting Michael’s childhood to the same chanting from the prison, which means we’re getting closer to the cult. The problem is that if the next thing we find is as hard to stop as Michael Myers, ordinary patrol weapons aren’t going to be enough."
Clarice’s expression immediately became serious.
Axel continued, "Glocks are useful against people. Shotguns are better, but even Michael took more punishment than anything human should survive." He folded his arms. "If this cult has more corrupted people like him, we need something heavier."
Clarice walked toward the desk and picked up a folder. "I was already thinking the same thing."
Axel looked at her.
"I sent headquarters everything from the last two days." Clarice opened the file containing her reports. "The prison collapse, the chanting, Gein, Michael Myers, the record from Laurie’s childhood home, and the purification you performed."
"What did they say?"
Clarice’s expression became strange. "Almost nothing."
Axel frowned.
"No follow-up questions. No demand for clarification. No senior agents flying down to take control." Clarice tapped the folder lightly. "They simply told me to continue investigating."
That bothered Axel more than an immediate federal takeover would have.
A normal agency receiving a report involving resurrected killers, hidden cults, and unexplained underground structures should have reacted with disbelief or overwhelming interest. Complete calm suggested that someone inside the Bureau either thought Clarice had lost her mind or already knew that things like this existed.
Clarice seemed to have reached the same conclusion.
"I requested additional weapons and protective equipment," she continued. "Headquarters didn’t approve my list through normal channels."
Axel sighed. "Of course not."
"They gave me an address instead."
Axel looked at her.
Clarice held up a piece of paper. "We’re supposed to collect whatever they authorized ourselves."
That was enough for Axel.
"Let’s go."
Clarice grabbed her jacket and sidearm, and the two left the Dolphin without wasting more time. Axel briefly glanced toward the lobby on the way out and saw Mike Enslin still arguing with hotel management. Apparently, Room 1408 had not yet surrendered its next victim.
Half an hour later, Clarice directed Axel toward an address in an ordinary Miami neighborhood. They expected some kind of government warehouse or secured federal building, but instead found a small self-service laundromat squeezed between two businesses. The glowing sign above the entrance looked so ordinary that Axel wondered whether Clarice had copied the address incorrectly.
"This is it?" he asked.
Clarice checked the paper again. "Apparently."
They entered.
Rows of washing machines lined the walls, and the air smelled of detergent and warm fabric. The only person inside was an older man wearing a baseball cap who sat in the corner reading a newspaper as if two armed investigators had not just walked through the door.
The man never looked up.
He coughed once.
Then he casually extended one foot and pointed toward a metal door marked STAFF ONLY.
Axel looked at Clarice.
Clarice looked at Axel.
Neither said anything.
Axel opened the door.
Behind it was a narrow concrete corridor sloping underground.
At the far end sat an old freight elevator.
Axel stared at the setup for several seconds before turning toward Clarice. "Your agency has been watching too many movies."
She gave him an irritated look. "Don’t ask me. I came out of training and got sent straight into this investigation. I barely know where half the offices at Quantico are."
Axel stepped into the elevator with her. "That makes me feel much safer."
The old doors closed.
The elevator descended far longer than Axel expected.
When they finally opened again, he was prepared to see some enormous underground command center filled with impossible technology. Instead, the space beyond looked disappointingly normal.
Desks.
Filing cabinets.
Fluorescent lights.
Telephones.
The only unusual detail was the people working there. Nearly everyone Axel saw moved with the controlled awareness of experienced federal agents, and several glanced toward him with enough interest to suggest they already knew exactly who he was.
A young man with black-rimmed glasses approached. "Clarice Starling, FBI Academy trainee attached to the Miami inquiry?"
Clarice nodded.
The man turned toward Axel. "And Officer Axel Vance."
Axel’s eyebrows rose. "You people really do your homework."
"Please follow me."
The young agent did not explain further. He led them through the office and opened the door to a private room near the back of the facility.
Axel’s eyes immediately lit up.
One entire wall had been turned into an armory.
Pistols were arranged beside shotguns, compact submachine guns, rifles, and several weapons Axel could not immediately identify. Ammunition boxes were stacked beneath them in carefully labeled rows, making the room look like everything Miami’s emptied gun stores no longer possessed.
A broad-shouldered man with a thick beard sat at a workbench cleaning a rifle. He looked up when Axel and Clarice entered, set the weapon down, and wiped his hands with a cloth. "You can call me Marcus."
"Your real name?" Axel asked.
Marcus smiled faintly. "The only name you need."
That answered the question.
Marcus stood and gestured toward the weapons. "This facility handles equipment that doesn’t always move through normal local supply channels. Some of it is experimental, some is specialized federal inventory, and some is simply difficult to obtain on short notice."
He pointed toward the racks. "Your authorization is simple. One primary weapon each and a standard field load of ammunition."
Clarice nodded.
Marcus’s expression became more serious. "You don’t lose it. You don’t loan it to civilians. You don’t tell anyone outside the investigation where you got it."
"Understood," Clarice said.
Axel was already studying the wall.
Clarice made her decision quickly. She selected a compact MP5, checking the weapon’s weight and controls before placing it on the counter. The submachine gun was small enough for close-quarters work but offered considerably more firepower than her service pistol.
Axel looked through several options before choosing a Remington 870 shotgun. It was familiar, reliable, and much better suited to the kind of close-range fighting he had experienced against Michael Myers. Even so, he kept staring at the heavier weapons farther down the wall.
Marcus noticed.
"Not enough?"
Axel lifted the Remington. "Good gun."
"But?"
"I’ve recently met someone who kept walking after enough handgun rounds to kill a football team."
Marcus slowly smiled.
Axel set the shotgun down. "You have anything with more stopping power?"
The armorer stopped wiping his hands.
For the first time since they entered, he studied Axel carefully from head to toe.
"You’re Axel Vance."
Axel frowned. "You already knew that."
Marcus’s smile became considerably warmer. "I knew the name. I wanted to see whether the stories matched the man."
Clarice glanced between them.
Axel asked, "What stories?"
Marcus ignored the question and walked toward a locked cabinet in the corner. He entered a combination, opened the heavy door, and removed a long black metal case. The way he carried it immediately told Axel that whatever was inside was not light.
Marcus placed the case on the table.
Then opened it.
Axel stared.
Inside lay an enormous handgun that looked less like a pistol and more like someone had cut down a cannon and attached a grip. Beside it rested a cartridge so massive that Axel instinctively picked it up just to confirm that what he was seeing was real.
The round was thicker than his thumb.
Clarice stared at it. "What is that?"
Marcus leaned against the table. "An experimental single-shot handgun built around a .50 BMG-class cartridge."
Axel slowly looked at him.
"That’s a machine-gun round."
"Exactly."
Axel looked back at the weapon.
Marcus laughed quietly. "Some engineers get bored when you give them government funding."
That explanation sounded disturbingly believable.
Marcus picked up the oversized handgun and checked the action before placing it back inside the case. "Nobody here likes firing it. The recoil is vicious enough that an ordinary shooter can damage his wrist or worse if his grip and stance aren’t perfect."
Clarice crossed her arms. "Then why does this exist?"
Marcus shrugged. "Because somebody wanted to know if it could."
Axel smiled.
Now that was an answer he understood.
Marcus picked up the huge cartridge and held it between two fingers. "One shot. No magazine. No second chance unless you have time to reload."
He placed it beside the weapon.
Then Marcus looked directly at Axel.
"I wouldn’t hand this to most people."
Axel raised an eyebrow.
Marcus pushed the black case toward him.
"But from what I’ve heard about you, Officer Vance..."
His smile widened.
"I think you might actually be able to use it."
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