Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (60 page)

“Maybe it’s unlocked.”

“I doubt it. Like I told you, Dad was real protective over
this place.”

“That just makes me more intrigued about what could be
inside,” Raith said with a laugh.

“You know, the more I think about it, it’s possible the stuff
you’re looking for is in there. I don’t know if it’s damaged, or whatever. But
the whole place can’t be empty, right?”

Raith gripped the fence. “Do you want to come with me?
Getting in is no problem. Getting in without breaking something, well… that
might prove a challenge.”

Savannah gave a shy smile. “I’m wearing a dress. Didn’t think
I was going to be climbing fences today. Let me go back and change.”

She did. When she came back, she was wearing a pair of ripped
jean shorts and a sleeveless cotton shirt, carrying a crowbar and a set of bolt
cutters.

“What are those for?” Raith asked, pointing.

She smiled. “Getting in without breaking something.”

Raith considered explaining why the skin on his hands was so
dark; telling her they didn’t need these tools because of what he could do. But
that would come in time, and only if necessary. Savannah may have been Myriad’s
daughter, but that was no guarantee she was a healer. “I guess we just snip the
padlock and open the gate. No need to climb up and tangle with that razorwire
anymore.”

She flung an arm and let it slap her thigh. “You mean I
changed for nothing?”

Raith chuckled as he took the bolt cutters from her. “I
didn’t know you had these.”

With a single snip, the padlock fell off and the gates
squeaked open. They walked the stacks of crates, alert for signs of new
occupants. Satisfied there were none, they made their way to the building. The
light-star was beating down, and though they’d stuck to the shade of the stacks
they were both sweat-drenched by the time they got there.

It was a squat, one-story building made of dark brick,
flat-roofed and crumbling. Raith tried first the front door, then the back. The
windows were tall and narrow, and flush with the window wells, so there was
nothing to stick a crowbar into from the outside.

Raith was unused to letting physical barriers stand in his
way, so abstaining from ignition was an exercise in restraint. After how
quickly Merrick had turned against him, he thought it best to tread carefully
around Savannah. “Well,” he said after a few minutes of searching, “what do you
think about breaking a window? Would you be opposed to the idea?”

Savannah creased her bottom lip. “We broke the lock,” she
said with a sigh. “Might as well smash a window.”

Raith made sure to knock away all the bare shards before he
went through the window frame. He was surprised the building had all its
windows intact, though some did look newer than others. In Belmond, he doubted
there was a fully-windowed building in the whole city.

Humidity wrapped him in its arms as he stepped inside. A
musty odor lay over everything, along with a thick coating of dust. The first
room was stark: two desks, a bookshelf, a floor lamp, and a door leading to the
hallway. Both desks were empty, drawers and all.

Savannah followed him inside, and they moved on. More offices
off the hallway, most with only one desk. Men’s and women’s bathrooms. A lobby
with a curved receptionist’s station. A conference room. A big common area
packed with tiny cubicles. Empty, empty, empty.

Then they followed the hallway in the opposite direction and
came to one last door at the end. Inside was the big corner office, with the
domineering desk and a seating area for guests. This was where the patriarch
had worked, Raith guessed—generations of them, for years and years before the
Heat.

This desk was empty too.

“Is that it?” Savannah asked. “Have we seen everything?”

“It looks that way,” Raith said, crestfallen.

“Sorry,” Savannah said. “I feel really bad that we didn’t
find what you were looking for.”

“It’s alright,” said Raith. But it wasn’t. “I suppose I
should take one last look around your study. If you don’t mind.”

“No. No, not at all. Come on, let’s—” She stopped when she
saw Raith squinting at the wall. The room’s rear left corner wasn’t quite as
far over as it should’ve been.

He went to it. A hairline seam he could only see in direct
daylight ran from floor to ceiling. He pushed. The wall snapped open, like one
of those toggling box lids with the magnet inside. The hidden door swung back
to reveal a narrow corridor which ran alongside the wall until it hit a
staircase and descended into darkness. “Your family has a thing for hidden
doors, don’t they?” he remarked.

“I guess so.”

“If there’s anything to be found in here, I’m willing to bet
it’s this way.”

When she looked at him, he could see the fear in her eyes.
She tried to hide it with brave words. “We should go down, then. Do you have
anything we can use as a light?”

Raith looked at his hands. “With a cloth, some oil, and a
table leg, maybe.”

“If it’s a torch you want, I’ve got plenty of those back up
at the house,” she said with a nervous laugh. “It’s a shame I didn’t think to
bring one.”

“It’s broad daylight. Who would’ve thought?”

“You want to go back?”

“I can burn for a little while,” Raith said.

“What do you mean
burn
?”

When his fingertips glowed to life, she jumped back. “What is
that? What are you doing?”

Raith stopped. “I have some of the same powers your mother
had. I’m guessing you never saw her do anything like that.”

Savannah gave a quick shake of her head.

“And you said her hands never looked like this? No strange
coloring in her skin?”

Another shake.

“The more we ignite, the darker the skin gets. She must have
gone without igniting for a long time. I don’t know how, but she must have. She
did have fingernails, I assume?”

“Yeah,” Savannah said with a strange look, as if it should’ve
been obvious.

What were you doing here, Myri? Why did you come? Why do
you keep picking up your life and leaving again? And where have you gone this
time?
Raith entered the passage and moved toward the stairs, Savannah close
behind him. Exploring whatever was down there might take longer than the light
from his hands would last, so they’d have to be quick about it. His worries
were soon assuaged, however. In a cubbyhole between wall studs at the top of
the stairs sat an oil lamp and a striker. “That’s a fortunate stroke of fate,
isn’t it?” he said, lighting the lamp.

“You need to tell me more about this thing with your hands
after we’re done,” Savannah said.

Shadows swayed over the steps as they descended into
darkness. The staircase went on for a long time—longer than a single story’s
worth, Raith was sure. They went down so far Raith could feel the temperature
change; still stuffy, but five or ten degrees cooler. When they got to the
bottom, he was astonished at what he saw.

Their footsteps clanked onto smooth metal flooring, sending
echoes across the expansive chamber before them, a multi-tiered metal landscape
of ramps and staircases leading to various screens and consoles. The glow from
the oil lamp was nowhere near strong enough to reach the opposite side of the
room, but Raith could see rows of lightbeam panels running up the walls and across
the ceiling, where tubular ducts and thick wires entered and exited through
portholes in the paneling.

Furry, podlike shapes hung from the ceiling above.
Bats
.
Mounds of their guano speckled the floor. The room’s most astonishing
characteristic, as far as Raith was concerned, was how much it reminded him of
Decylum. The layout was different, but the architecture was very much the same.

“High Infernal,” Savannah breathed.

“Your dad never told you this was down here?”

She shook her head.

“Any idea what it’s for?”

“None whatsoever.”

“I think we should have a look around. Here.” Several more
oil lamps hung from mounting brackets on the wall which looked like they’d been
tacked on to replace the electrified lightbeams. Raith took one down and used
his own lamp to light it, then handed it to Savannah. “In case we get
separated.”

Her brow darkened. “Why would we get separated?”

“We won’t,” he said. “Stay close.”

Two corridors led off the main room, one to the left and
another straight ahead. Raith let Savannah choose. Left, she decided. The
hallways, austere hexagonal passages with smooth flooring and dead lightbeams
running their lengths, made Raith feel like he was home. Though there were
spots overgrown with moss and the occasional mold infestation, the structure
appeared intact, and he saw no apparent flaws in its craftsmanship.

Curious, he ignited and reached out to touch one of the
lightbeams. The device made a sputtering sound, then crackled to life, filling
the corridor with pale blue light.

“What’s that?” Savannah asked, shielding her eyes from the
sudden brightness. “How did you do that?”

“Back when this place had power, the main generator would’ve
fed these like any other light fixture,” he explained. “They hold a charge,
even without constant electricity. You can take them off the wall and carry
them around if you need a light. Ingenious devices.”

“How did you know what to do with it?”

“This place,” Raith said, “is like a smaller version of
Decylum. The halls back home look just like this. The walls, the lights… even
the floors.”

That was when Raith knew he’d stumbled upon a treasure trove
of resources the likes of which he could never have imagined.
This place has
everything we could ever need to expand Decylum
, he thought excitedly.
There
would be no jury-rigging, no melting down and reforming random scrap to fit
Decylum’s design. Everything would fit perfectly as-is, down to the last bolt
and rivet; a natural extension of what’s already there
. The find might even
grant him some small piece of redemption with Decylum’s people. Unlikely, given
the death toll of the expedition. But the knowledge of this place alone was
better than coming home empty-handed.

“So yours is the same sort of facility as this?” Savannah
asked.

“It’s made of the same stuff, and probably from similar
blueprints. Ours came equipped with more in the way of supplies and renewable
resources than I’ve seen here so far. Let’s keep looking.”

The corridor turned back on itself a few times before
arriving at a dead end. Doors along the way opened into a series of stark hab
units, most of them fully furnished. There wasn’t much else.

They returned to the main room and followed the second and
only remaining passage. This time, the corridor ended in a set of sliding doors
that opened onto a deep scaffolded stairwell. They clattered down two
crisscrossing flights of steps into another large, open chamber lined with
thick pipes and tall metal holding tanks of various sizes. Decylum had plenty
of these, used for everything from processing waste to transforming electrical
power.

Beyond the clusters of processing tanks lay a vast garden
area bordered by grated metal walkways, over which the familiar hanging heat
lamps that mimicked artificial daylight were suspended. As they drew closer,
they could see weeds, troops of fungi, and the snaking tendrils of vines
growing up the handrails. Every patch of earth was covered in languid greens
and browns, the sorts of plants that grew without daylight. Wall-length windows
surrounded the garden on three sides, looking in on bleak, clinical rooms
resembling the laboratories in Decylum.

“What is this place?”

“It looks like an early model of the hydroponic gardens we
have back home. You know, speaking of home, I don’t think I ever told you
why
we left.”

“No, I don’t think you did.”

“The short answer is, we’re growing too fast. We’re running
out of room to house everyone. We meant to bring raw materials back from
Belmond, but the Scarred attacked us when we arrived.”

“Can everyone who lives there still make babies?”

“We haven’t had the same problem as the above-worlders,
that’s certain.”

“I wonder why. Living underground?”

“Yes, that’s almost certainly the reason. We’re healthier,
too. We seldom have problems with light-sickness or mutantism, except among our
hunters.”

“Who are they?”

“The people who explore the above-world and take down game
for us.”

“You have a garden like this and you still have trouble
feeding everyone? You really do have an overpopulation problem. That’s
unheard-of in the Aionach.”

“I know. And our gardens are even bigger than this one.”

Savannah stopped. “Did you hear that?”

Raith stopped as well. “No. What?”

She listened. “Never mind.”

They continued on through the room, climbing a shallow set of
steps onto the metal walkway suspended over the gardens. The platform swayed
beneath their combined weight, its supports squeaking with age. Something moved
in the stand of weeds off to their right, subtle as a soft breeze. They kept
going, headed toward the doors leading into the laboratory area.

The doors were sealed; heavy things with a black plastic
keycard access box on the wall to the left. Raith opened this the same way he’d
opened the hab units on the level above. A short ignition melted the plastic
locking tabs on either side of the access box, allowing him to remove the cover
and let it dangle by the wires. Another ignition shorted the circuit and
activated the admittance chip.

The deadbolt clicked open, and the doors swayed inward.

Monitors and computer consoles were positioned along aisles
crowded with rolling chairs, neat and orderly despite the film of age lying
over them. Long work counters ran the length of the room beneath
stainless-steel shelving units lined with supply bins. Lab machinery stood in
stark gray plastic.