Scarlet Dream. James Axler
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a graveyard at night.
The rest of the room contained one single desk set back from the others. Six old dial telephones sat to one side, their wires trailing down into a circular port at the edge of the desk, along with what appeared to be twin computer terminals. Kane peered closely at them for a moment, and he realized that one was in fact some kind of television monitor, most likely used for security purposes back when the base was live. Now, both screens were blank, powered down two centuries earlier.
To the rear of the large room were six tall banks of monitoring and recording equipment. Each of them towered above Kane to perhaps eight feet, their size and shape reminiscent of the cold-drinks machines common in hotel lobbies and schoolyards in the final years of the twentieth century. Kane glanced over them briefly, acknowledging the rows of long-unused lights and the ancient, rotten magnetic spools of tape that had presumably been used to store recordings of the mat-trans unit in operation. The banks of recording equipment ended off to the far right, where Kane spotted an open doorway that led from the room into darkness beyond.
Over to the far left corner of the vast, windowless room, Brigid found the majestic unit that powered the mat-trans. The unit ran floor to ceiling, with rounded sides stretching wider than her arm span; it reminded Brigid a little of an old-fashioned pillbox sentry post. Thick pipes emerged from the sides and top of the unit, and a dust-caked monitoring display glowed at roughly head height. Presumably, this display was a failsafe backup as the main monitoring would be conducted via the powerful computers in this underground control room. A sealed steel door stood in the center of the cylinder, with rounded corners and a raised lip that reminded Brigid of the doors one would see inside a submarine.
Tentatively, the titian-haired woman placed her hand against the metal sides of the unit, but even though it had just been activated, no vibration could be detected. Within that towering steel cylinder, the cold-fusion process for creating nuclear energy was in operation, Brigid knew, a product of the Manhattan Project research of the 1940s.
After a moment Brigid stepped back, eyeing the manner in which the piping connected to the mat-trans chamber. Since the nukecaust, anything involving nuclear energy set off alarm bells as being dangerous or risky, and yet here was an artifact that predated that paranoia, from when nuclear power was still being explored as a viable source of energy. In many ways, this generator was as much a relic from another society as anything the Cerberus team had encountered in ancient civilizations like the Mayan and the Sumerian.
With his gun held high, Kane used the weapon to gesture toward the open doorway. “We’re all clear here,” he said. “Let’s move out.”
Following Kane from her position at the far wall, Brigid slowed for just a moment to examine the neat, unmarred desks that ran across the axis of the room. It was both curious and intriguing, seeing all this monitoring equipment for the mat-trans, reminding her that there was a point not so very long ago where the whole concept had been nothing more than a theory to be explored by brave physicists.
“Come on, Brigid,” Grant urged as he sidled up beside her. “No point keeping the man waiting.”
Brigid nodded and trotted off to where Kane waited at the open doorway leading into shadow. Grant followed, seemingly more himself now, the wave of nausea from the hard trip having mercifully passed.
Kane crept out into the corridor beyond the open doorway, noticing that a heavy rollback door there had jammed halfway out of its wall recess. Presumably, the door should lock while the prototype mat-trans unit was fired, but Kane could see that the door was now caught where the cracked walls had moved just enough to lock it in place. Time, he realized, eventually wore down everything, not just animals and plants. Kane continued, entering the corridor with Brigid a few paces behind him and Grant warily bringing up the rear.
As they entered the corridor, lights began to flicker on in recessed alcoves above, motion sensors detecting their movement. The corridor was typically bland, its walls finished in a two-tone design, primarily an off-white that had turned gray over time, while the bottom third was shaded with a thick red stripe. The stripe was some kind of section identifier, Kane theorized, perhaps relating to the mat-trans-testing facility. The corridor was empty, stretching off toward the doors of an elevator, their metal gleaming as the motion-sensitive lights at the end of the corridor flickered on in bursts of brilliance.
The corridor smelled faintly of burning, where ancient, long-settled dust was being heated by overhead lights that had presumably not been switched on in over two centuries. Kane glanced up, wondering if something might actually catch alight up there, but he could see nothing smoldering and so dismissed the thought. He walked slowly forward, the Sin Eater raised in his steady grip, checking for signs of movement or for any other indication of life. The corridor was silent, the only noise coming in the brief tinkling sounds of the fluorescent tube lights winking on as Kane approached them.
There were several doors leading off from the corridor, each one pulled closed. Kane tried a few of them, as did Brigid along the opposite wall of the corridor, and they found the majority of them unlocked and leading into what appeared to be storage rooms. The rooms stank of vinegar and were stacked full of boxes, their ancient cardboard tattered and torn. A few of the stacked boxes had toppled, spilling their contents of paper files and tape recordings over the floor. Ignoring them, Kane moved on, Brigid and Grant following.
Certain that no one was hiding in the straight corridor or the storerooms that branched from it, Kane stopped in front of the elevator doors and eyed the call button thoughtfully. The silver button glowed invitingly with a circle of faint orange around its rim. Kane knew that if anyone was in the redoubt—something that was by no means certain—using the elevator was a sure way to alert them to his team’s presence.
Brigid and Grant caught up to Kane as he waited, and Grant voiced what his ex-Mag partner was thinking. “Stairs?”
Kane nodded. “I think so,” he said, leading the team toward a recess at the side of the corridor wall that ended with a heavy fire door.
“Looked like we were the first to use the mat-trans in a long time,” Brigid said quietly, “but Brewster said they couldn’t be sure where the intrusion had come from.”
“Could be topside, then,” Grant muttered.
Sin Eater ready, Kane pushed his free hand against the fire door, hoping he wasn’t about to trip some unseen alarm.
With Brigid right behind him, Kane pushed open the door and waited for a moment until he was reasonably certain no one was standing in the stairwell in front of him. Dim lights placed at every third popped on. It was enough to make them clear, but hardly dazzling. In the day-to-day running of this redoubt, the staircase would have been for emergency use only, so there had been no need to keep it permanently or brightly lit. The moving of the door must have tripped the switch for the floor lights, but no noise accompanied this. Could be a silent alarm, of course, Kane realized distrustfully before tamping down the paranoia he felt.
At the rear of the group, Grant had adopted a ready crouch, scanning the corridor they had just traipsed down, just in case any sudden surprises materialized. Grant had never been comfortable leaving an operational mat-trans at his back; it meant that potentially anyone could sneak right up behind you, even from a previously empty room.
“Stairs are clear,” Kane stated shortly before he stepped through the doorway and disappeared into the empty stairwell. They appeared to be at the bottom level of the redoubt, the hard concrete steps echoing Kane’s every movement. Swiftly, Kane climbed the stairs, taking them two at a time, his Sin Eater pistol nosing ahead of him.
Brigid followed, entering the stairwell immediately in Kane’s wake, but holding back at the lowest step so as to keep Kane covered while he hurried up to the first landing, the midpoint between floors where the staircase abruptly turned on itself. Brigid watched as Kane whipped the Sin Eater around and surveyed the next set of stairs before making his way up to the next floor. After three seconds Brigid followed Kane up the stairs, the hollow heels of her cowboy boots clip-clopping loudly in the stillness of the vertical shaft.
Grant waited patiently at the bottom of the stairs, standing so that his back