“Did you come here to check on the light?” asked the doc.
“Light?” stammered Raven, her mind scattered to grief and worry.
“Yeah, one of the tubes is fluttering. Sent in a maintenance request yesterday, haven’t heard back.”
She let go of Daniel’s hand and looked around, easily spotting the flickering LED. “Oh. I can check on that, sure. But… Umm.” Raven walked over to the doc, lowering her voice. “Did you find anything in the tests?”
“Ahh, yes. That.” He looked around as if to ensure no one listened in. “Surprisingly, no. I tested some of the samples three times thinking the equipment was too old to work properly and had lost calibration.”
“No toxins?” Raven felt herself making the same wide-eyed ‘ooh’ face her daughter did when she mentioned taking her outside.
“In fact, the only test that came back with anything unusual was the swab of your poncho. I found… pollen.”
“Seriously?”
Preston leaned in close, studying her face, mostly eyes. “I didn’t believe it either until I ran a test on a control sample. It seems you were exposed to the outside atmosphere and did not pick up any detectable traces of toxic metals, harmful organophosphates, or other compounds we know for a fact had once saturated everything.”
“How long ago was that?”
“The records are somewhat lacking in that regard.” He cringed. “Most of them had been on the computer system, which as you know, no longer works. If I had to estimate, I would say likely a century and a half or longer. If you are correct in your description of extensive foliage, perhaps even three hundred years.”
She paced. “That’s a long time. Maybe enough for the planet to heal? How long ago did the Saints go out? Do you know?”
His eye twitched. “The eight? I’m not exactly sure, but it would have been at least that long ago. Two or three centuries.”
“That clue you gave me… I figured it out. Dead but not dead. Publically dead, but still alive, somewhere.”
“We really shouldn’t be talking about that.” He hurried to his desk.
She followed. “Why not? What’s the secrecy for?”
“Understand that he genuinely believes it is deadly out there. One set of tests on you doesn’t prove enough. Could be luck, a chance shift in the wind.”
“But my father—”
“Disappeared. Noah’s convinced he succumbed to the conditions on the surface.” The doc rubbed a hand down his face, scraping a week’s worth of beard.
“I went out there and breathed without a mask for over two hours and the samples you took from me are clean. We have to tell Noah it’s not as bad out there as everyone believes.”
“It’s not that simple. Getting through to him is going to take time.”
She resisted the urge to bang on his desk. “Time’s what we don’t have.”
“Raven… Look.” He lowered his voice. “What I’m about to tell you must stay secret, at least for now.”
“If keeping a secret is going to hurt people, I can’t promise I will.”
Preston shook his head. “No. It’s not that kind of secret. Eighteen years ago, the Arc suffered a failure of multiple wind turbines. Noah was still new at the administrator role back then, but he knew that without those generators—”
“We’d all die.”
“Exactly. He conferred with Kathryn, who had Ben’s job back then, about what to do. Ultimately, they asked for volunteers to go out there, fully expecting it would kill them as it did the Saints.”
“That sounds familiar.” Raven smirked. “Did it?”
“The two who initially went out to repair the turbines did both suffer symptoms from toxins they’d been exposed to… or so it seemed. They died relatively young a decade later, but in the absence of conclusive proof that their—most likely cancer—came from topside and not anything down here, Noah assumed. So, under the belief that anyone who goes outside would eventually die, he decided to create a volunteer group who’d willingly commit to an early death to keep everyone else alive.”
Raven paced, waving her hand about while trying to think of a response to that. “Why keep it secret? Why fake deaths?”
“I can’t give you a clear answer on that, only he can. However, I suspect it is largely from not wanting the residents to venerate these people as living Saints. There is already enough superstitious nonsense going around. That, and when they agreed to risk the outside world, they essentially agreed to die. Concealing the fact that people ventured to the surface on a somewhat routine basis prevented any problems that could have arisen from that.”
“Such as?” She set her hands on her hips.
“Others demanding to go out there when they saw the volunteers coming back alive, unaware that they’d been contaminated with toxins that took years to kill. Or the tedium of facing angry people protesting anyone leaving at all. Or perhaps they picked up contagious maladies that could spread to others.” Preston flicked at a pen sitting on the desk, a pen that likely hadn’t worked in decades. “Noah was inexperienced back then. And now, it’s too late to mention it for fear of backlash.”
Raven fumed. “People are already getting sick. If topside air is clean, we need to open the front door.” She blinked. “Wait… is that why level one is off limits? Are the Saints up there?”
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t shared with me where they sleep. For all I know, they stay outside. They do show up periodically for examinations when most residents are sleeping. I’d been testing them like I tested you. They’ve been mostly clean, but I am unable to publically discuss those results because the subjects are officially dead.”
“But I’m not.”
Preston tapped his fingertips together. “Exactly why I was so excited. This is the start of what’s needed to begin a debate. Let me talk to Noah about your test results. Give me a wake or two.”
She bit her lip, desperate to do something now before Tinsley wound up in a bed on oxygen like old Daniel. However, unless the CO2 scrubbers or the turbines catastrophically failed within the next day or two, it probably wouldn’t hurt to give the doc a little time. If she did anything drastic, he could call her crazy from toxic exposure. Then, no one would believe her and they’d all die in here.
“Okay. Please hurry.”
“I will.”
She started to leave, but caught herself, and went over to check the faltering light.
It turned out to be a dirty contact, easily cleaned.
Other than a grumbly Shaw randomly kicking things, the remainder of her work shift dragged by free of anything out of the ordinary. It bothered her to see the guy so upset since he’d always been the calm one on the tech team. Forty-one, pale as a ghost, and prematurely grey, he’d been a mentor to her as well as Lark, and—except for heavy objects falling on his toes—had never raised his voice before, and that scared her. Mostly because he had a deep, resonant voice that didn’t really fit his looks: slender and tall, with an angular face and bushy white mustache. Lately, he worked primarily with the new guy, Trenton, who’d been on the team a year, having turned nineteen a few months ago.
He seemed to be a nice guy, if a bit slow to learn things. Shaw trusted Raven to work on her own after four months, but he still worked in tandem with the new guy. Of course, Trenton hadn’t grown up with Dad teaching him stuff his entire life.
Shaw’s gotta know the deal, too. He’s shouting because he’s as scared as I am.
The doc telling her the samples came back clean made her eager to bring Tinsley to the topside hatch, even if they merely peeked at the world without getting off the ladder. They couldn’t stay outside long, but her daughter had been so excited at the idea of going up there, Raven felt like the child who couldn’t wait for their birthday present.
At long last, her work shift ended and she hurried to Sienna’s room. Upon finding no one there, she headed down to the rec center on level five. Josh and a young guy from the kitchen staff named Vijay pl
ayed eight ball. Sienna relaxed in a chair by the modest pool while the remainder of the kids swam in the questionable water, tossing a foam toy around. Their tread socks, ponchos, and inside shirts lay scattered around seats nearby.
Sienna appeared to have recently finished using one of the exercise machines. She, too, had removed her poncho. Sweat saturated her inside shirt. If the library caretaker would allow people to take books out of the room, she’d probably have been reading.
Though the kids all appeared in good spirits, she couldn’t help but think them acting a bit sluggish. She flopped into the lounge chair beside Sienna, but trying to have a conversation that didn’t involve spilling what she’d learned about the new Saints or her plans to take Tinsley outside later proved impossible. So, after a mere fifteen minutes of inadvertently sounding like an airhead, she lobbed a lame excuse about exercising, flung her poncho and boots off, then hopped on a treadmill. The poncho would make her overheat. Her boots would disintegrate if she punished them on a treadmill. Ancient duct tape could withstand only so much. Besides, normal people didn’t go jogging in old combat boots.
She definitely knows I’m hiding something.
While running, she soon came to the conclusion that she had to tell Sienna everything. The two had been basically sisters for most of their lives. She had no doubt the woman could keep a secret. However, she’d probably try and talk her out of bringing Tinsley topside—or want to go with them. If Sienna went that route, she’d want to bring the other kids… and then the entire Arc would know they broke the rules.
No, to protect her best friend-slash-sister, she had to keep that secret for now. Talking about a secret team of techs who’d faked their deaths to go outside didn’t seem as big a deal. That, Sienna wouldn’t share with the kids and could definitely keep quiet.
Not since she’d been a little kid on the wake before her birthday had Raven wanted sleep time to hurry up and arrive so badly.
Tinsley sat on the edge of the bed, hands clamped over her filter mask, trying to muffle her coughing.
Neither she nor Raven had changed into their nightgowns in anticipation of their rule-breaking expedition. The majority of Arc residents followed a wake period from 1-0-0-0 to somewhere between 2-3-0-0 and 0-2-0-0. A much smaller number started their wake at 2-1-0-0 and kept an eye on things while everyone else went to bed. The ideal time to break rules fell after 0-1-0-0 when most people slept, or at least rested in their rooms.
After seeing all that dust fall out of the filter panel, Raven insisted the girl wear her mask. It wouldn’t help against high CO2 levels or low oxygen levels, but since the standard filters had become too saturated with crud to do anything, the air contained excessive particulate dust. Owing to that, Raven also wore her filter mask inside.
When the mechanical dial clock ticked to 0-1-1-0, she decided it good enough to start. She didn’t want to stay up too late.
“Okay. Time. You ready?”
Tinsley nodded eagerly.
“Remember. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even whisper.”
The girl raised a thumbs-up.
“Not sure what I’m going to say if anyone asks why we’re roaming around so late, but I’ll think of something.”
“You’re taking me to see the doc.” Tinsley pretend-coughed.
Oh, no. She’s as sneaky as me. I’m going to be in trouble when she’s a teenager. Raven started to grin, but ended up staring forlornly at the floor. If she becomes a teenager.
She took the girl by the hand, crossed the room, and peeked out the door. As expected, no one else ventured outside their quarters. Empty pale grey corridor stretched in two directions. As quiet as she could be, she scurried out and headed to the right, away from the Arc’s central core. Even with a third of the LED light bricks missing or dead, she had enough light to see.
Tinsley followed in silence, padding along in her tread-socked feet.
If I’d suspected the best way to keep a kid quiet was to break the rules, we would’ve done some mischief long before this. She chuckled in her head. Chase might’ve been on the lazy side, but Tinsley took totally after her mother. Ballsy and fearless worked for Raven, but in a six-year-old, those qualities frayed nerves of any adult responsible for her.
This tiny person she helped create had all the seriousness of a spy from a fiction novel, sneaking into—or in this case out of—an enemy base under pain of death if caught. The adorableness of it clashed with her worry that both of their lives hung on such a thin thread, one turbine or CO2 scrubber away from the end.
Raven headed to the nearest maintenance access tunnel and ducked inside. Tinsley had no trouble navigating the passageway, not even having to stoop, though her hair did brush the ceiling. Bent in half at the waist, Raven fast-walked along routes she’d spent years navigating to fix broken wires, water or sewage pipes, fuses, ventilation fans, and just about everything else the designers crammed out of sight.
Barring a sudden emergency, the off-hours tech crew wouldn’t be prowling the maintenance tunnels, so being in there offered a near guarantee that no one would catch them. It took her a few minutes to make her way across the Arc via the tunnel maze. Fortunately, no part of it narrowed down like the wire conduit out to the turbines, roughly half the size of the standard tunnels.
When she reached the turn into the passage she’d discovered the other wake, she paused to listen. Around the corner at the end, the opening met the forbidden corridor fairly close to the locked door. It didn’t seem likely that the security team would station someone by the door listening for anyone sneaking around. Locking it probably offered them enough confidence. That, plus everyone in the Arc except for Raven—and apparently Tinsley—was terrified of the outside world. No one would dare try anything like this…
Unless they snapped and went crazy like that kid who left the hatch open.
Holding her breath, Raven snuck to the corner and peered around at darkness. Feeble light in the maintenance corridor didn’t reach past the bend. Also, the end had a steel plate blocking it and the ‘escape passage’ lights would be switched off.
She looked her daughter in the eye and whispered, “It’s going to be totally dark for a bit. The hall is empty. Just hold on to me, okay?”
Tinsley nodded.
Raven felt her way along the maintenance passage until she reached the steel plate. Getting a grip on it from the inside proved tricky—until she fumbled across a pair of handles.
Oh, crap. It’s supposed to be opened from this side. Are the Saints hiding somewhere in the Arc?
That thought sounded easily possible considering less than 200 people lived in a facility big enough for 2,000. Exactly where they holed up, she had no idea. She never saw anything suspicious when she’d been searching around for where her theoretically crazy father might’ve been hiding. That pointed back to level one, since she hadn’t gone up there. Perhaps they’d simply hid from her in a cabinet or concealed the door to a room behind a shelf. Maintenance requests didn’t usually come from areas with no people living in them. Considering these ‘saints’ started off as techs and had the skills to fix the turbines, they wouldn’t need to call her team to do anything.
How are they eating? She shrugged. Don’t need to worry about that now.
She stifled a grunt and lifted the steel plate, edging out into the corridor while trying not to drag it and make noise. Once out, she estimated a 180-degree turn and set the plate down, leaning it against the wall.
Bracing one hand on the left wall, she led Tinsley along the corridor in the pitch dark. Walking for ten minutes gave her the confidence to break out the crank light, knowing no one in the Arc could possibly see it past a closed door from that far away.
Tinsley looked around at the graffiti, her expression curious, not at all frightened.
Eventually, the silvery glint of the busted elevator doors reflected the flashlight beam. She guided Tinsley into the shaft, pointed at the ladder, then up.
Her daughter nodded o
nce, then traced a smile shape in front of her filter mask.
Raven chuckled at the cuteness, mostly from nervousness. She had no idea what sort of punishment would fall on her if they got caught. The security team had a jail, but only Dad had ever defied the ‘no one goes outside without permission’ rule. He didn’t get in trouble for some reason. Maybe because he agreed to keep his travels quiet? Noah didn’t have any reason to fear a sudden rebellion of people all scrambling to go outside. They all believed it toxic. Even if they knew the truth, topside didn’t have food or shelter.
She believed Noah truly thought it poisonous out there, but she also disagreed with him.
Tinsley coughed, the sound echoing behind them. Panicking, she pulled her filter mask down so she could clamp her hands over her mouth.
“It’s okay,” whispered Raven. “Don’t hold it in. They can’t hear us this far away… but you still shouldn’t yell.”
Once the coughing subsided, Tinsley grinned, then re-seated her mask.
Raven looked her over. “Do you still want to do this? It’s a long climb.”
“Yeah,” whispered Tinsley.
“If you get tired, tell me right away and I’ll carry you up.” She gripped the metal ladder, but hesitated. I’m insane. A six-year-old isn’t ready for climbing up a ladder this long. What if she falls?
Raven rummaged a cord out of her satchel and tied it around her daughter’s chest making a harness, then tied the other end around her waist.
“What’s that for?” asked Tinsley, holding her arms out to either side.
“In case you slip.”
“Okay.”
Raven started the climb at a fairly slow pace. Tinsley kept up, scaling the ladder with surprising ease despite her small height. Before she knew it, Raven reached the top. Working by feel, she turned the wheel to unbar the hatch.
“Ready?”
“Yes!” whispered Tinsley. “C’mon. Open it!”
“You’re not scared at all?” Raven smiled a little.
“No. Grandpa was okay. And you went out. You wouldn’t let me go if it wasn’t totally safe.”
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 13
