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**adults only!!**
**a few examples of bad language in the following - only for effect**
just felt like writing the first two chapters of a book, and then stopping. so there. here's the first one. now read it (or else!).
Chapter One - The Manhatten Project
There was no way of knowing what it was like to wake into this kind of environment. She certainly wasn't ready for it. She was in the few moments before being fully awake; that surreal time when the mind tries to reconnect itself to being conscious. It's the time when you can remember vividly every detail of your dreams and nightmares, and she remembered hers. She was becoming aware of what was around her very fast, but it all felt wrong. Her body wasn't doing what it was supposed to be doing. It didn't feel natural. Her whole body was suspended; she was floating. She couldn't breath. She was trying, but it just seemed to be happening without her. It was definitely happening. She was taking in air but she wasn't in control of it. Her head was tilted back and her throat felt as though it had something jammed in it. She tried to open her eyes, but they opened to blackness. Nothing. It wasn't a nightmare. It was real, and she was starting to panic. Her arms reached for whatever was in her mouth. Her arms felt heavy, resisted. And that was when she knew she was under water. They hit something. Both sides. Flat. She kicked her legs and felt a third side. She was in something. A box. No... water... a tank. her eyes were still jet black. Frantically, her hands pushed through the water, catching strings of something; breaking them. She wanted to cry, and to scream, but she couldn't. Her lungs started coughing violently, her throat tightening, jammed open with something. Oh god! It was a pipe! She was breathing through a pipe! Her arms shot upward, straight out. She felt them get cold, and pulled them back toward her. They hit the surface of the water and submerged again. It was the way out! It was open! She grabbed at the tube in her mouth and pushed her body away from it, sliding it out of her mouth. It moved. Sickening. It was moving inside her body, inside her lungs. She felt it in places it shouldn't be: it was too far inside her body. It slid further out of her mouth. Then suddenly the pipe was no longer breathing for her. Her mouth was still open as the pipe came out completely, allowing water to flood into her. Her body tried to reject it but it was still coming. She closed her mouth, but it forced open again as she violently coughed, trying to eject the liquid. With the pipe out of her mouth she wrenched her body from the water, emerging icy cold and then collapsing over the side of the tank.
Her hands went to her mouth again as she began vomiting, water draining downward out of her mouth. She fell and smacked her face hard against the floor. It must have been the floor. Hands grabbed her arms without warning and shouts came from everywhere. She screamed air and water from her lungs, her legs kicking in the water tank. She was wrenched out and into the air, still contorting her body in fearful defiance. And then she felt the cold floor again. She was on her back, pitch black, with something on her chest. It was crushing her. She couldn't move. They still had her arms. And then the mask was ripped off her, eyes blinded under the light. Her sight came to her and she saw somebody stand up off her chest. She vomited again, and blacked out.
Voices came and went in a daze of nausea. Her head hurt. She felt herself draw breath and realised she was awake. The physicality of the pain in her head made her connect, and she became aware of what was around her much faster this time. Nothing felt safe. She stared up at the lights, not noticing the bodies standing over her. She reached her arms out infront of her. They felt heavy. That must mean she was reaching up; so she was still on her back. It hurt to think. Her eyes still dazed in the light, she rolled onto her side. It was icy cold; hard. It still felt unsafe. She didn't know where she was. She felt unprotected.
The voices came again. It scared the breath out of her. They were right over her, dark shapes of people. She thrashed around, agonising in the light. The bodies stepped back. They were shouting. One was shouting. She could only just hear it, but not the other voice, it was just there.
***
"Look, i'm sorry, ok. Jesus, she'll get over it in a few hours. What's your problem?" He looked down at the young woman, naked, spasming on the tiled floor in a pool of dirty-grey water, her face and hair soaked in vomit. She's pretty hot, he thought.
"Kevin," came a quiet command from behind him.
"What?"
"Give her some space you insensitive prick." John Arnold had the last word every time. He was forty-three and greying. What he said always made sense, and it was the only way anything got done. He knew that the twenty-one year-old kid saw no use for sense since he arrived here. Sometimes john doubted it had a use anymore, but he understood they had no chance without it. "You went through the same shit nine months ago Kev..."
"So?" The kid was challenging him. John had no time for it.
"So you understand she doesn't even know who she is, let alone why she just woke up practically blind and deaf and breathing through a tube underwater. And you weren't even in the room to help her get out."
"Who was there to get me out? What, you?"
"Fuck off. I got out an hour before you. I don't even know if i was conscious when you woke up. She nearly died. They're people Kevin. Start giving a shit or you're no use to us."
Kevin was already walking out. Fuck them. And John Arnold with his answers. Everything isn't going to be alright. Nothing's going to be alright. The woman would understand that as soon as she got over the warming.
Warming is just like those couple of moments of semi-conscious confusion when you're waking up in the morning, except it lasts a little longer. There, doesn't sound so bad does it, he thought. Imagine, the same thing, just like those few moments, but relative in length to the amount of time they'd been asleep. You end up with, give or take, around three and a half days of disconnected, near-blind panic. You can't hear anything, you can't see anything, and you have no idea who you are or why. And pain. Warming hurts. It hurts a lot.
He was walking a corridor. It was typical for this place, he thought. For a start, it was grey. Every room in the Bunker was grey. Ceilings were mostly low and everything was made out of rough steel and concrete. He had no idea if it was meant as a bunker, or why, but it did look like one. It was the worst place he could imagine for a twenty-one year-old. He wanted to punch through the walls and get out. He wanted to leave and be alive again. Jesus, they were in the middle of New York City for christ's sake! Of course, it wasn't the same as it had been. He didn't know how it had changed, but it had. He knew they couldn't go outside now. That was the one rule they all stuck to. They'd seen what happened out there. Well, they hadn't seen it, but they'd heard it. That was all they needed. Practically none of them wanted to go out now, they just stayed in the Bunker, and waited.
"Level 9", Kevin read the stencil marks on the wall without looking . He'd come down nineteen floors. The bulk of the population and the tanks were on floor 29, and this was farther down than anyone had been before. Well, apart from him. They had no idea what was down here. He headed for the generator room. He liked it down there, because no-one alse did. He needed to be on his own again.
***
The young woman woke again. She breathed out a deathly-silent scream, genuinely wanted to die. It hurt to think about the pain she was in. Her memory was back in parts, but she didn't care anymore. Every second thought was of switching herself off, no more pain. It was like having a hangover from the morning after shooting yourself in the head with a shotgun. It was like her body was decaying alive. She wanted to die. It felt like that would be more natural.
She could see again, but her eyes hurt. She opened her eyes and immediately shrank back protectively from a figure standing over her. He was huge, and dark, silhouetted by the light from the low ceiling. She knew he was a he. He stood like a man. Where the hell was she? What was this man doing standing over her? Who the hell was he? She felt vulnerable; weak. She half wanted him to kill her. Why was she thinking like this? She didn't want to think. She wanted him to leave her alone. She was crying.
She could hear something now: he was saying something. It was the softest voice she had ever heard, but her ears hurt to listen to it. "There's no need for you to be afraid," he was saying. "I know it hurts more than anything else you've ever felt. And you probably don't remember ever having felt anything else. Most of us took a few days to remember our names, but we have all been through this aswell. Including me." He stopped. It wasn't a sudden stop, but more like a fade into the distance. He spoke as though talking to a child made of dust or ash, like his breath might cause her to fall apart if he spoke too loudly. She found him soothing. "My name is Oscar" he whispered, putting a gigantic hand on her forehead, and stroking her vomit-soaked hair back. It shocked her very slightly at first, but in a second he made her feel like she could never be hurt by anything again. She felt better.
"Here," his voice floated over to her. "This is for you. It goes on your arm. You'll like it," he told her. She could almost feel him pressing his hand just underneath her shoulder. He left something there, letting it pinch ever-so-slightly at the hairs on her arm. It felt like a plaster, sticking to her skin. And then she faded away into a daze. She felt no more pain. She felt like she could never feel anymore pain. The young woman wanted to thank Oscar, but she was too tired to open her mouth and say the words. In a second she was totally at peace, asleep.
It was a beautiful sight, Oscar thought. She was a beautiful sight. Just a baby in terms of her womanhood. He wished she had never had to be here. But, of course, if she wasn't here now, she would have died a hundred and thirteen years ago on the outside. He stopped and thanked the lord for her life. And then he thanked the people who put her in the tank more than a century ago, who had all died in favour of them.
***
"That doesn't matter" John Arnold forced his voice over the others in the control office, he was sitting on a desk, with a few of the others who had shown themselves to be leaders of the group. "She's the second one in two days. We've got no way of keeping up with all of this, and i can't see any other choice but going up into the city."
"I can."
"Cathryn, just because you can see an alternative doesn't mean it's really there." He'd been through this a thousand times, "you're seeing a mirage of hope down here because all of you are scared of leaving the bunker. And you're right to be scared. But the reality is that this facility can't sustain us at this rate. Come on, we're up to at least four warmings a week now, and enough food for one more week. If that. Where did you all plan on finding what we need?"
"Jesus, John. For the last time, there's thirty floors in this place, this is twenty-nine, and nobody's ever been down below level 11. Why can't we check what's down there first?"
"Because," he turned around to a screen on the wall behind him, "here;" he was guiding the way through a three-dimensional map on the huge screen, using a directional ball mechanism which he rolled with his first two fingers, "the dropshaft to level 10 is flooded. Look." he motioned to a small section of the map which crossed over from level 11 down to level 10, which was filled in with a red colour. There was a flashing readout above that section on the screen:
unit 10.19 / 11.01 dropshaft area
- integrity error -
- environment sensor activated [00101904] -
- subfloor crossover mechanism inoperational -
- system requires manual reset -
"That means it's flooded, and there's no way of knowing the status of that shaft, without opening it..."
"So open it then." said cathryn demandingly, she felt her own integrity questioned by his apparent knowledge of the system. She felt outdone.
"First of all, the shaft could have been underwater for over a hundred years, in which case the unit isn't likely to work."
"How do we know unless somebody goes down and looks in there?" came a response from one of the others. It was Williams - he was ex-army; a captain. He was the type who could shout louder than anyone else, and got his leadership status that way. He had everything down in a cleancut and simple-minded plan, and didn't seem to notice the not-exactly-subtle rivalry between cathryn and john. Williams wasn't often listened to in technical discussions.
"That's bullshit John, the odds of it having failed so early on aren't high. It probably happened after a hundred years."
"There's also the question of whether the flooding is water. Or gas. If we open that thing and it's compressed oxygen, or methane from the tanks, the explosion could trip out the whole facility, or worse cause structural damage. Not to mention killing the person who goes down there to open the shaft. Face facts Cathryn, there's no reason to believe they'll be anything but a nuclear core and endless machinery down there, which we've never needed to touch, and don't now. We need to find out what happened to the city. Which means leaving the Bunker."
"John. Last time a group left the bunker we heard over the radio what happened to them. You heard a man just like you saying the same things you're saying now, and then you sat here listening as he was violently killed out there. We don't even know what it was that did it. Or how many of them there are. The same thing is likely to happen to any group that you take up there. Our best hope is to keep that door closed. There's no way through it unless we open it, and we've got no way of defending ourselves..."
"Yes we do", came a voice from the open doorway. It was the twenty-one year-old kevin. "I heard your little presentation dad, very informative." In his own way he was mocking his father's ever-cautious attiude.
"We're trying to resolve something kevin," replied John, "so do me a favour and tell me your ideas later, okay?"
"Fantastic dad, but your whole safety first plan isn't going to fix anything."
"Kevin..."
"The dropshaft on 11 isn't flooded, the sensor's faulty. Do an integrity check across environmental 101901 to 101909: it's only 101904 that's registering flooding. Had to override it. I've been going down there for months. Before today i've only been as far as the generator on 9, because anything below that is only lit by emergency lighting. Needs reseting or something, i've not really looked. But i got bored today and decided to go right down to 1. And you are right. There's only rows and rows of powerplants and other shit, nothing we need."
"So, what's your point kevin? Or are you just trying to show us how well you did at risking the lives of everyone in the facility?"
"Yeah, dad, something like that. There's more past 1. The digital map behind you stops at 1, but there's five sub-levels underneath that." He turned to the others in the room, including the sexy-for-her-age Cathryn who had been some kind of researcher in the army, and Captain Williams, who was this big guy who still wore his uniform, even though the army didn't exist anymore. "The point is i don't think they'll be a problem with us defending ourselves anymore. You guys coming down to see it?"
***
The young woman was sitting on the edge of a small bed in a concrete room with the door open. She felt better. The light from the door suddenly disappeared and the little room shrank under the dull yellow of the ceiling light. A huge shape ducked it's head under the door. She looked up, and she knew who it was immediately. His voice began like the wind had carried it in: "Hello. My name is oscar," he bellowed in a whisper.
"I thought it might be you" she said. "I'm sarah. It's nice to meet you Oscar, do you know what i'm doing here?"
"Don't worry Sarah," he reassured, "this place is to keep you safe. You'll be able to remember after a while, but you chose to come here, like we all did, a long time ago."
"How long, Oscar? What's going on?"
"I need to take you upstairs now, so you can see mr arnold and cathryn, they need to tell you some things."
He couldn't have avoided the question in a more ominous way. Still, without realising, sarah found the whole thing as exciting as it was frightening. She felt she was in the right place down here; safe with him. It was like talking to a giant child. Sarah wanted to hold him like a baby, but she knew her arms wouldn't reach half way around him. Looking up, she saw a large stenciled sign on the wall reading "level 28". She walked by his side, five foot ten inches, and still less than three quarters of his height.
***
Kevin stood alone in the cab of the dropshaft on 11. John and the others were outside, as though waiting to see what happened to him. "Oh come on, you're not serious, are you? Look, i opened it, and we didn't blow up, did we? Or was it just that i didn't notice? Just get in, i've been down a hundred times. How do you think i've been entertaining myself in this place? I had to find somewhere to go."
"You have done this before?"
"Hello? Have you lost your hearing aid again dad? Will you just get in." They stepped very cautiously over the ledge, down into the cab, as though it might fall away from underneath them. It didn't move. They relaxed a little. A dropshaft was like a very unambitious lift shaft. It went from one floor to the next, on hydraulics, and that was it. Then you had to move to another one for the next floor. Must have been their idea when they built it to minimize the extent of each individual mechanism in the facility, so if any one unit went wrong the damage wouldn't be catastrophic. Genius, thought Kevin. Just that if one of these dropshafts broke down, you couldn't get to the next floor to use the next one, making them all useless. The only staircases were in the top three floors, the only place there was space for them. The simple fact was that they'd all been in dropshafts on the upperfloors, hundreds of times at least, and those times were no different from this one.
The cab jolted, and they all panicked, apart from Kevin. "Oh, sorry guys. It does that."
"Jesus," said Williams, "you could have said something!" He had been edgy to begin with.
"Calm down Mr Williams," he smirked. "You looked like you needed some excitement in your life." Kevin was cocky, but unmistakably relaxed. That meant he'd done this all before and it was fine. Cathryn and his father caught on to that and reluctantly let him lead the way.
***
They passed the stenciled sign reading "Level 1". The lower ten floors had been as kevin said, boring, but still they seemed to find it all fascinating, excited in their serious way. Mostly there were endless rows of whiring metal boxes. Nothing was mechanical, everything happened inside the boxes: electrics; hydraulics; nuclear power sources. It was complicated. And boring. Plus they were in low light most of the time from level eight downwards.
"So what is it we're looking at down here, Kev?"
"Right now, not that much." He wasn't interested in a Q&A session, he was too busy looking at Cathryn's backside as she walked. They could see the surprise when they got there.
Cathryn turned around. "And the five sub-floors?" she asked him. He just got his gaze up to her eye-level as she looked back.
"That's something you have to see!"
"Well, you said it would help us defend ourselves, right?" cut in John, "so what is it? A weapon?"
"Yeah, something like that dad." The kid was becoming more annoying than usual. But john admitted to himself that it was exciting. They might be on the verge of something to fix one of their biggest problems. He had to wonder what his selfish, immature son had finally done to help them. They got to unit 01.01 - the final unit on the map. He'd never imagined it was another dropshaft, since there were no other levels below this one on the map. Kevin pushed the red button on the wall panel. It turned green, and the door opened.
They stepped into the lift: Kevin, John, Cathryn and Williams. They let the door close and the hydraulics jolted into life, apart from Kevin's adventure earlier in the day, unused for a hundred and thirteen years. It was impressive that they were still working. John felt the cab ease to a stop, buffering against the airpads on the floor. And the door opened.
Sub-level 1.
There was almost no light. Only the flourescent emergency lights ran continuously along the floor in rows, the odd one of them off. Between the rows there were racks which ran for hundreds of feet each. The far sides of the room were jet black. They couldn't see what was on the racks. Then, as they moved cautiously forward among the beams of green light from the floor, they began to see what Sub-level 1 was. It was a huge storage room for thousands and thousands of ballistic weapons. Guns.
And not only guns, but as they walked through the rows they found rocket launchers, grenade launchers, knives, net launchers, mines, flame weapons, and endless amounts of other killing tools. Kevin was standing, smiling; Williams seemed to be in army heaven; while John and Cathryn were relieved to have something for their population to protect themselves with.
After many minutes of inspection and careful thought, John asked his son "What about the other four floors?"
"Don't know. I only read the plan on the wall next to the shaft we came out of, that's how i know there's more. Thought i should come back and tell you before i went any further."
John Arnold was proud of his son's almost-responsible decision. And yet he didn't say anything back to him.
They continued over to s01.19, the next shaft, which ran down to s02.01. Everything was counting backwards now. The cab green-lighted and they got in. Inside they could only make out each other's faces by the glow of the emergency lights, and when the door opened, they were again in practical darkness. No rows this time, just seperate objects, each one huge and taking up it's own space on the floor. As they looked around, they could make out some objects in the distance of the room, each as big, perhaps, as a large room. The closest of the new discoveries could be seen straight away. He saw it. His heart stopped.
It was a bike, huge with a chrome engine and exhaust, just like the one he used to have, but bigger, shining all over, metallic. He couldn't take his eyes off it for a second. But he had to think how the hell he would get it out of there. It certainly wouldn't fit in the dropshaft cab. It meant there had to be another way out.
John and Cathryn were both thinking the same thing. "How the hell did we not know about this?" John's words came vacant of any emotion, he was as shocked as anybody else. "There has to be a lift mech of some kind up to the surface. Jesus, is it secure? It might have been open for a hundred years. Anything could be down here."
"Alright," Cathryn got a hold of her ideas, "we need to find it. With units this size needing to be transported on it, we're not gonna miss it when we see it. Let's move together though. Like he says, it isn't necessarily safe. Williams?"
There was no answer from the army man.
All three of them turned to where he had been half a minute before, between them and the shaftcab.
He wasn't there.
"Shit," Cathryn whispered. "Where the hell is that moron?"
John gave a low volume call, so as to avoid attracting the attention of anything that might have been down there, "Williams!" he could see even Kevin wasn't so sure of his environment anymore. John watched Kevin return toward the cab.
"Hold on dad," he whispered as he went. There's a floor panel back here.
John turned. He knew what his son was doing, they both knew the bunkers electronics and computer systems back to front, or at least the parts they'd seen. A floor panel was, perhaps surprisingly, located on the wall. They gave them that name because there was one on each floor of the complex, and they gave access to that individual level's power connection and electronic/hydraulic functions (apart from dropshaft electro-hydraulics, which ran seperate). John guessed straight away that his son was going to try reseting the power supply to the level. It was just about the most dangerous thing you could do within the bunker, due to possible surge, which was probably why he hadn't done it on the floors below level nine earlier on.
"Just watch what you do in there, okay Kev? There's no emergency light over those panels"
"Yeah, well, we need to find him, don't we," he replied backward through the mess of wires under the lcd. It was possible to reset very safely using the keypad and screen, but the clever bastards who put it there never realised you can't read lcd in the dark. It was all manual from here, and mostly from memory since there was no emergency lighting over it.
In a flash burst, the whole panel sparked violently in his face and Sub-level 2 lit up. They could see everything from steel grates to concrete walls.
"Are you okay?" came in stereo from cathryn and his father, running over to him.
"Fine" he gasped, still a little shocked, his face hot from the spark. He stepped back from them as they got too close for his comfort. He liked to be on his own. "There's your man" he annouced proudly, looking over their shoulders. John and Cathryn turned to see Williams staring back at them in surprise.
"How'd you get that on?" he shouted across eighty feet of the room, unaware of the small panic he just caused. The three of them didn't hear him say it. They were too stunned by what Williams had found. Next to him was a giant armoured tank the length of a bus. It must have weighed twenty tons at the most reserved guess, and it was armoured with all sorts of huge guns and rockets in addition to a main double-barrel. the ex-army man was almost drooling. "how do we get this stuff out?" he shouted.
"It's not coming out." John said.
Cathryn was a little surprised at this, "an hour ago you wanted to get out there and take over the city. What happened to you?"
"I didn't want to take over anything. I just wanted, and still want, to go out and get the things we need. The guns we'll take, there is something out there, but the last thing i want is an army. That thing over there isn't gonna help construct anything. Anyway, i'm not gonna open another doorway into this place. It's all we've got. If the lift mech for these things is open, we're gonna shut it, and if it's not, it's gonna stay that way."
She smiled "sounds good. But we might not have to go out at all. Let's see what's on Sub-3, at this rate i'm expecting to find either an aircraft carrier on the next level, or something completely different, which might be the things we need. John, we need to go back up, the girl should be awake by now. She's gonna be very confused. Kev, can you take Williams down and see what we've got on 3."
"Alright."
***
Cathryn caught up with John again twenty minutes later in the corridor on 29, heading for the control office. She came into stride with him. Cathryn was carrying some papers and a small metal box.
"What've we got about her, Cathryn?"
"Nothing. And i'm not exaggerating that." She gave the reply with no trace of their long-running conflict of ideologies. They had a warmer. A new arrival. It was all business now.
"Ok, have we got a name for her?"
"She's down as Sarah. That's it." She searched the papers, "just a load of bullshit numbers and a release time. She was supposed to wake first, before you and Kev." She stopped dead in her stride. "Jesus! The date here says she was supposed to be out of the tank ninety-eight years ago! What the hell's going on John? Nobody else ever had a release date on their file. Who the hell is she? And why didn't she get out all the way back then if she was supposed to?"
"Let's ask her and find out."
"It's not just that, John," she showed him the front side of the metal box she was carrying. "Look." it was a personal effects container. Sarah's own link to her past. Everybody there had one.
"So what's she got? That should tell you something about her."
"Look at it john. On the front. There's a thumbprint scanner. It's locked."
John Arnold didn't say anything. He grabbed Cathryn's arm and beckoned her to follow him. He had no idea who the girl was, but there was a reason she was supposed to be out first. She must know something. He just hoped she was over the warming and she could remember it.
They came to the door of the control office, and went in.
The young woman was sitting in a leather chair, facing the desk where John had been sitting earlier on, and intensively studying the digital map on the wall that had been behind him. Oscar was standing protectively behind her. Wow, it was still hard to get over just how big that man was, no matter how many times you saw him, or heard his whisper of a voice. She looked up at them.
"Sarah," began John, excited; impatient. She had something he wanted. Meanwhile, Cathryn stopped in the doorway, a little surprised by the sight of this young girl who was going to save them all. She must have been only just into her twenties, very pretty, with a tiny hint of tomboy to her appearance. "How 're you feeling now?" John continued to probe.
The young woman looked up again, pausing to weigh up his excited manner, and noting the forty-something woman in the doorway. She seemed to feel more comfortable now, completely contrasted to when John and Kevin had found her in a fit on the floor of the tank room four days ago, just after she got out. "I'm fine," she ventured, cautiously, reclining against the back of the chair and leaning her head back against Oscar's big body where she felt safer. "Thanks".
"That's good to hear, Sarah" he continued. "Cathryn here has a box for you. It has some of your things in it. We thought maybe you'd like to open it." Cathryn offered the metal box forward to her. She took it cautiously, still with the smallest hint of uneasiness at all of the new things.
"Open it, Sarah," said Cathryn, "it's..."
"What am i doing here?" the young woman cut in. "What is this place? And who are you people? Please, Oscar won't tell me."
Shit, thought John, she doesn't know anything. He paused for a second, disappointed. "Okay, Sarah," his voice dragged, "open the box and we'll tell you everything we can. Go ahead." He motioned to the box on the desk in front of her. "Just press your thumb against the pad on the front."
Sarah held his gaze for a moment, and decided she could trust him. She did as he said and pressed her thumb on the little black pad, and then removed it. She saw the pad was lit up with small jagged lines and curves, all arranged in the pattern of her thumbprint. The pattern flashed off the screen, clicking the lid out of it's locking mechanism, which broke the seal, and released air into the vacuum of the box. It was open. She lifted the lid slowly.
John and Cathryn moved around behind her to see what was there. In the top of the box was a pristine white Nike baseball cap. She smiled, and picked it up, putting it on with her now-clean blonde hair pushed up under it. She looked back in the box and found a couple of pink and black hair bands, and a digital watch camera with a couple of X7 memory sticks taped to the underside of the strap. They went in the side for recording. What was she going to need to record in this shitty place? John thought. It went on the desk with the hair bands. Last in the box were a few papers clipped together with something that looked like a credit card, but with a plain black front (aside from her name, just printed 'Sarah', no surname). Doesn't she have a last name? Who the hell is she? John was uneasy at her apparent lack of identity. The girl looked up at them. "Who put this stuff in here for me?" Sarah said.
"We all got a box," replied Cathryn, "they're your personal belongings. I guess we assumed it was us that put the things in, before we went in the tanks."
"Yeah," said Sarah, half listening, "i do recognise them." She had turned to the map on the wall again. "I recognise this too" she said, half to the room and half to herself. "You were going to tell me about this building and what we're doing here."
***
Williams was in the cab for dropshaft unit s02.19, ready to go down to Sub-3. "Are you coming kid?" he shouted across the room impatiently.
"Hold on. Jesus." Kevin was pressing buttons on the floor panel over on the opposite side of Sub-2, next to the other dropshaft. He was periodically checking the lcd as he went. It was a whole lot easier now that they had light down there.
"What's the problem? Or are you just fucking about?"
"I just want to make sure the shaft going down to 3's gonna get us back up. That's all."
"Why now? You never checked on the last one, or any of the others probably."
"That's right, Williams. But there was no light up on those levels. There was more chance of a surge from the panel while trying to get the light on to do it, than there was a chance of the shaft having problems. It wasn't worth the risk then. But we've got no reason not to do it now." The screen flickered a final response:
unit s02.19 / s03.01 dropshaft area
- {{ error }} remote unit diagnostic: negative -
- environment sensors inactive [s00030101] upto [s00030109] -
- subfloor crossover mechanism operational -
- status: open {A} -
"Close the door." Kevin shouted over his shoulder.
"What?"
"Close the door, Williams" he repeated. Williams stepped out of the cab and pushed the button on the outside. It flashed from green to red, sealing the doors together. The screen re-evaluated it's response:
unit s02.19 / s03.01 dropshaft area
- {{ error }} remote unit diagnostic: negative -
- environment sensors inactive [s00030101] upto [s00030109] -
- subfloor crossover mechanism operational -
- status: dormant {A} -
He could hear Williams walking up behind him as he read it. "It's fine" he reassured the army man.
"Why does it say negative then?" said Williams, looking over Kevin's shoulder.
"It's an automatic diagnostic. Happens when i request status check on a unit. The system assumes there's something wrong, just incase there is. If it comes up negative, it means there's no problem to diagnose. So let's go"
"The thing says there's an error in it."
"Like i said, the computer's expecting a malfunction of some kind automatically, otherwise it would never know if there is one. This is hydraulics, Williams, the computer doesn't need it to function, the dropshaft does, so without checking, it would never know if there was a problem with the mechanical parts, because it never uses them. It registers an error because it's looking for a fault and doesn't find one. You get it now? It's fine."
"How the hell do you know all this shit kid?"
"Me and my dad spend a lot of time with the systems, that's all. It's what we do." He lead Williams over to the shaft.
***
Both watched intently as the cab opened on Sub-3, straight into darkness again. Just the now-familiar lines of green lighting from the floor could be seen, and more rows of something. They stepped out, walking over to the racks. They were much taller than the racks for the guns, maybe seven feet high. Williams was first, and as he closed in on the beginnings of the racks, he stopped. For several seconds Williams didn't say a word. He was still. Frozen.
"Kevin" he whispered back to the boy.
"What's up?" said Kevin. "What've we got?" In the dark he stepped around the army man. And saw for himself.
"They're people Kevin."
"Jesus." He was as shocked as Williams. "Are they alive?"
"They've been down here for a hundred and something years. There aren't any tanks or anything. What the hell's going on kev?"
In the hazy glow of the green floor lights they could just make out the faces of men. Lots of them. What Kevin and Williams had assumed were racks, were actually rows and rows of men, each one about seven feet tall. All facing straight forward, standing. They didn't move at all. "Shit. I don't know" kevin replied in a quieter whisper. They were both scared senseless. All these giant men standing motionless in the dark was unnerving at the least.
Kevin and Williams stood motionless too, not making another sound. Until Williams noticed something.
"Their chests aren't moving Kev," he said under his breath.
"Shit. You're right. They're not breathing are they. What the fuck's going on?"
Williams stepped forward to inspect the closest one. He came right upto it, and reached up to it's face. He stretched out his forefinger and hesitantly touched at the side of the face. "Ah! Shit! Oh god!" He jolted backward away from it, arms waving for something to grab onto, falling on his back. "Oh god!"
Kevin stepped back. "What? What is it? Is it alive?"
"It's fucking metal!" Williams gasped back at him. "It's face is fucking metal!"
"Oh jesus." Kevin said under his breath.
***
"Okay, let's start basic. My name's John Arnold, and here you can see Cathryn. and you know Oscar." It was the routine for initiating warmers back into everyday life as it was in the bunker. "You are inside what we know to be the Bunker, or Beta Site, if you prefer the computer's terminology." He nodded toward the digital map on the wall over the desk.
"Beta Site? that's Greek, right? Two. Does that mean there's another site like this?" Sarah asked him.
"Your guess is as good as mine on that. We have no other information to suggest it's true, and no connection with the outside world. We only know that we're underneath New York City, and that it is noticably different in structure from the way we all remember it. We know these things because a few months ago an expedition left the Bunker to explore the outside and re-establish contact. Their reactions to the outside environment gave us the impressions i just mentioned. We heard everything over the radio. The expedition also suggested that the city above us is completely devoid of friendly inhabitants, and resulted in the deaths of all of the members of the group that went. We don't know what killed them: whether human; another creature or creatures of some sort; or a virus for example. They were noticably violent deaths, and since then we have never opened the door to the outside. Everybody has remained inside the Bunker."
Sarah was shocked. "Do we know anything else about what happened? I mean, shit, there could be anything out there."
"No. Nothing else." It was obvious there was something related to that which he wasn't telling her, like the fact that very soon he was planning to lead the next expedition into the city. "We only know that sooner or later we will have to go up there again. Whether we want to or not." Cathryn frowned, but didn't oppose him during Sarah's initiation.
"Anyway," John continued, "back to the general info. The Bunker is home to sixty-one people, who all live between levels nineteen and twenty-seven of the facility, we're on level 29 right now. you just upped the population to sixty-two, congratulations Sarah." he paused for a second. "All of these people have, at some time over the last nine months, been reborn out of suspended animation tanks, which is exactly what happened to you four days ago. I was the first to wake nine months ago, followed an hour later by my son, Kevin, who you've seen but probably don't remember. He helped me get you out of the tank, but at that time you were drifting in and out of consciousness and in severe pain, as we all were at our own time of waking. Cathryn came around ninth i think. Around the same time as Oscar there anyway." Sarah looked up at the large man and he smiled back down at her. "There are still a hundred and thirty-eight people suspended in tanks on this level of the complex, and the computer tells us it's now January of 2127, a hundred and thirteen years after we went into the tanks to begin with. We've always thought that this was the planned period for us to remain in the tanks, but there are notes on everybody here which we found, and yours says that you were supposed to be released ninety-eight years ago, which of course casts doubts on what we previously thought. It may even be that you were supposed to wake at that time, and then get us out after. So, it now appears that we were only supposed to be in for fifteen years." John paused again, perhaps for a reaction from the girl. She didn't give hime one. "Your notes don't reveal anything about you, Sarah, and we were hoping you might be able to remember. Can you help us?"
She looked up at him, clearly shocked and confused. "I'm sorry. This is too much for me to take in. I don't want to be a part of it. I don't think i'm anyone special, and i certainly wouldn't know how to get you out of these tanks, I don't even remember having seen..."
Her eyes moved. They were looking at the door. John and Cathryn both turned to see Kevin standing there, out of breath, with a smile on his face.
"Kevin," said John, surprised, "this is Sarah. The girl we got out the other day."
"Yeah, i saw her already dad. There's something you need to see. Now. Come on" As he walk at pace out of the control office, he checked behind him to see if they were following. They were. "We couldn't get any further than Sub-3, There's a digital lock on the entrance to 4. But wait 'til you see what was on 3" he said, almost running now. He was heading for the dropshaft on that level. They turned a corner and saw Williams standing outside the shaftcab with the same shocked, excited look on his face. He was staring awestruck into the cab. Kevin ran up beside him as though preparing to present what they'd found. He pointed where Williams was looking, into the cab. John, Cathryn, Oscar and Sarah moved up to where they could see in.
Holy Jesus!
All of them instinctively backed against the far wall of the corridor. Their faces all dropped in fear at the awesome sight. Standing there in the dropshaft was a seven-foot-tall humanoid robot, in shining gunmetal colour, with massive hydraulic arms and legs, it's eyes cold steel blue. It's head turned, laying it's gaze on each of the onlookers one by one, calculating. It looked like a living nightmare; no emotion. It looked unstoppable.
"You should've seen it down there, practically in complete darkness, just after kevin found the powercell in the side of it's neck. We thought it was going to kill us both."
"Tell me about it." Kevin said. " But it appears to be programmed to take orders from us. Fuck knows what's on the last two floors down there." He looked at Sarah, and smiled. She seemed unaffected by it all, almost comfortable with the robot around. She hesitantly smiled back. She was certainly more comfortable with the robot than with all the new people and information being pushed at her. "And it gets better," he continued, "there's at least a thousand of these things down there."
***
While most stayed to marvel at the robot, and it was attracting several more of the Bunker's population by the minute, John took Kevin down to the end of the corridor and round toward the control office. They went in and john shut the door.
"Kevin," he started, with an ominous tone that put his son on guard, "are you sure there's no way down onto Sub-4?"
"Yeah, dad." Kevin stepped cautiously, wondering what the problem was.
"And this lock. Was it a key? A number pad? What?"
"It took a swipecard."
"Shit," John said, turning to the desk next to him.
"What are you talking about dad?"
John was searching through the metal box on the desk, frantically.
"Dad! What?"
"The girl. Sarah. She had a black card in this box, about the size of a credit card. It was clipped to the papers here. It's gone. Kevin, find her. Now." He checked next to the box, but the digital watch camera was gone too, along with the memory cards that were taped to it. Kevin ran back in.
"She's not there with the others" he panted, almost out of breath.
"Shit. She's going down to Sub-4." John felt his bunker was in danger.
Who the hell was she?
And what the hell was down on sub-level 4?
***
------
first draft with your heart, second with your head.
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