by L K Hingey
Look harder, Kimber chided herself sternly. There was a giant metal box at the back left of the large room. She pulled the hefty doors opened and felt a rush of chilled air. It was a freezer. It must have kicked on when the power had been restored. She glanced around and saw racks of, what had once been frozen, embryos. The racks were stacked top to bottom, and other than a few bottles of chemicals, nothing else was stored in here.
Kimber began to rummage around in every desk of every drawer in the room. She left no cabinets untouched. If there was data to be found, she was determined to find it. All she could do was hope that the records had not been so controlled that the only way to access them would be on the computers in the offices. She did not have the time, nor the energy, for that. Instead she searched, and as Kimber searched, she prayed.
She prayed to Ganesha, she prayed to God, she prayed to Allah, and she prayed to Buddha. Kimber even sent a prayer of desperation to the ancient gods. They had worked together once already to help her in the darkness. If any one of them could hear her, or perhaps if they all could simultaneously, she was begging on bended knees. She needed something to bring back. Something that would protect Eve’s baby from a fate like what she was witnessing.
Finally, Kimber found what she was looking for. Tucked in a drawer was a clipboard with a laminated cover sheet that read Embryonic Modifications: Complex Graftings: Serial 40-60. She pulled the clipboard out and found another hidden underneath it. This clipboard did not have a laminated cover and read Embryonic Modifications: Simple Graftings: Serial 1-20. Kimber knew she had hit the jackpot when she opened the simple graftings packet. Listed in full detail were the variables, the controls, and the outcomes of every single trial. There were even pictures attached to the more extreme cases of malformation.
Kimber did not know if it was divine intervention, dumb luck, or the natural tendency of scientists to record everything, but she could not have asked for more definitive proof. She would add the clipboards to the stack of information she had outside, then she and Tristan would be able to get to work condensing everything to make sense of it all. There was only one more thing to take care of.
Sophia had probably passed away more peacefully than anyone else in the world. Realistically, she had probably been reassured that everything was going according to plan before being promptly overdosed with anesthesia. But, because this woman was supposed to have been her mother, Kimber felt an obligation to her. Kimber pulled the multi-knife out of her shoulder sack, walked over to Sophia, and cut off Sophia’s wrist band.
Kimber resolved to bury the wrist band in Inanna. Perhaps there the woman could have a sliver of peace. On her way out of the room, Kimber grabbed the Colonel’s briefcase. She hesitated near the body and uneasily felt around his neck. She did not know if the colonel’s dog tags would come in handy, but if they did not, she would bury them as well.
Kimber did not look back at the room, with its strange fusion of industrial flair and advanced medical-grade technology, on the way out. The images were already burned into her mind and she, like Kimberly, did not know if she would ever be able to unsee them. Kimber did not care about the architecture anymore or the secrets hidden behind the glass walls. She wanted to get back to the surface. She wanted to see Tristan. Most of all, she wanted to feel safe.
Kimber sat down by her now robust stack of data. Maybe on the surface she could take the time to sketch the layout of this lower level and the individual rooms. Right now, though, she needed to stay focused on corralling everything. Kimber was straightening the stacks and fitting as much as she could into the briefcase, when the first power reduction occurred. All of a sudden, the lights dimmed, pausing for an excruciatingly long few seconds, before flickering back to normal.
That was the only warning Kimber needed to make for the exit. She raced to the elevator and had her finger over the UP button, when she felt the next power reduction. Her senses were on overdrive and she heard the buzzing of the lights slow down. A second later, the lights dropped to approximately 10% of their original luminosity. Kimber was too panicked to scream, cry, or yell. She did not want to be trapped in the darkness of this sinister place.
Her mind clung to the fact that Tristan would be waiting at the top. She let herself picture his hazel eyes and his reserved smile. The lights of the lobby still did not return. She pictured his muscular chest and his soft breathing while he slept. The lights started to oscillate, spiking in brightness before dropping under 5%. Kimber took a deep breath and tried to recall his laughter. She let Tristan become her anchor, her mind flooding with the warmth of his care.
Kimber heard the buzz of electricity surging back through the wires and she hit the UP button before the lights even came back online. The elevator doors opened, and Kimber rushed inside pressing ML1 as fast and as many times as she could. She and Tristan could discuss the exploration of other sublevels when she got up to the surface. The only important thing now was to make it that far.
Her pulse pounded in her ears, and she could feel her blood coursing through every vein in her body as the heavy metal jaws shut. Kimber looked at her reflection in the cold smooth steel and could see how incredibly vibrant her coloration had become. Her adrenaline was clearly spiking, and every sense was tingling. As the machine began its ascent, Kimber was in tune with the pulses of energy in the air. She could even feel the disturbances of the electron fields on the metal surfaces.
With a ding, she passed SL3. The elevator continued upwards, ding, past SL2. Kimber felt the next power fluctuations coming. As she had expected, the elevator’s brakes locked when the sensors detected the drop in electrical current. Kimber waited for a few moments in the low light of the reduced amperage, forcing herself to breath. The lights came back, but much slower this time, as if the draw of electricity from the generators was getting painful.
Kimber pressed the ML1 button again and when nothing happened, she let out a loud curse. Although the power was restored, the brakes remained locked. She figured it was a safety mechanism and did not have the faintest clue how to override it. Her heart was pounding as she frantically looked around. Above her was a panel. It blended into the crisp linear designs of the ceiling, but Kimber picked it out quickly.
Kimber climbed onto the railing and pushed up on the panel. It did not budge. In a tide of panic, she repositioned herself into the corner for more leverage, and began to beat on it. It moved. Encouraged, she struck harder until the panel popped out of place. Kimber jumped down to gather the briefcase and all papers, carefully sliding them through the opening. The lights were still on in the elevator box, the luster spilling around her body as she followed the stack of data upwards and out of the hatch.
Relief was quickly replaced by anxiety as Kimber stood up on the roof of the machine and looked around. Her back was against the far wall of the elevator shaft, and though she could reach behind her and touch concrete, she could not get rid of the unsettling sensation of being suspended in the air. Emergency lights dotted the shaft, illuminating the cables and the metal tracks. Immediately to her right was the shaft’s wall, which ran the entire width of the shaft. On the left, however, the wall extended only about two and a half feet before opening into an adjacent shaft that extended another six feet out. The space was shadowed but Kimber could see huge coils of wire, pipes, and ventilation ducts extending down to the lower levels.
She was grateful for the dull yellow light but knew better than to rely on it. She took the flashlight out of her sack, getting ready for the next drop in power. She also removed the two road flares, momentarily marveling over Tristan’s resourcefulness. Kimber looked up towards the closed metal doors of ML1. They were only about twenty feet up. The elevator’s track had service rungs built into it and ran up the back wall of the shaft. It looked easy enough to climb, but the issue would be getting to the doors of ML1 which were on the other side of the elevator shaft.
Kimber edged over to the side of the elevator and looked down the utility space. The
drop was easily sixty feet. There were two maintenance pipe ladders that had been bolted onto the two opposing walls of the utility shaft, but they were centered on the ductwork, leaving about four feet of dead space between the edge of the elevator and the rungs. She wasn’t afraid of heights, but the rungs of the pipe ladder looked too thin to grip while leaping and holding the briefcase. Kimber looked for another way across the shaft. She could see a metal ledge running along the edges of the ceiling of the shaft and decided she could use it to work her way around the walls to the pipe ladders.
That was where her plan ended. She would not have the leverage to even try to pry the doors open, nor did she have any tools that could help her. She would have to trust in Tristan to either hear her or to figure out that she could get up the shaft, just not out of it, on her own. Kimber tucked the flashlight and flares into her belt and folded the thick stack of papers, shoving them into the sack. It was bulging, and she cinched the front leather strap down tight.
She needed both hands to climb, which left her no good way to carry the briefcase, so Kimber tucked it tightly under her arm and began. She paused only once to weave an arm around the ladder and use the other to carefully pull a flare from her belt. Pressing down on the flare’s safety switch, she flicked the cap off, igniting the fuse and then gently dropping it onto the roof of the elevator. The sudden illumination gave her confidence, and she wasted no time in the ascent. She had gotten about halfway up when the emergency lights began to flicker.
Kimber had dropped the flare in anticipation of losing the last of the emergency lights, but she felt herself climb even faster. Okay, she exhaled slowly when she made it to the top, the easy part is over. She took a moment to evaluate her next few moves. She was now close enough to see that the two opposing pipe ladders were actually connected. They had elbows that turned them 90 degrees onto the ceiling of the shaft, their rungs continuing as normal. The rungs were thin, but as long as the bolts remained anchored in the concrete, she did not think she would have a problem. All she would need the metal ledge for, was to get to the first ladder.
Since the flashlight would be utterly inaccessible once she got started, Kimber turned the beam on and tucked it into her belt. It shone upwards, effectively blinding her when she looked down, but it would be better than being left dangling in the pitch black should the lights and the flare die. Next, she bit down on the small handle of the briefcase. It had no other straps, and though it was heavy, she could manage.
Praying that she would not drop anything, Kimber grasped the ledge. Her grip was good, as the metal lip was thick making it easy to hold onto. She faced the concrete wall and tested the rough edges for any kind of toe grip. Her toes quickly found ridges, bumps, and groves that helped bear some of the weight as she left the safety of the track’s rungs. She was careful not to support too much of her weight on her feet, lest she slip, or should the concrete crumbled.
Her movements were deliberate, and her pace was slow. Kimber focused on breathing as calmly as she could though her nose. The ridges that her toes found also helped to keep her body at a distance from the wall, giving the briefcase space. She worked around the first corner using the ledge to turn into the short wall, not allowing her mind to dwell on the space below.
Next came the trickier outer corner. The briefcase made getting around the corner difficult and by the time she got to flat ledge again, she was panting through her gritted teeth. Her fingers were burning as she realized that she was now hanging over the much deeper utility shaft. Only a few feet to go, she thought, forcing herself to remain slow and methodical. She finally got to the pipe ladder and carefully put her feet on it, testing her weight.
The ladder seemed sturdy, so she let go of the ledge and grabbed the briefcase out of her mouth. Her neck was sore from the weight, but she was just thankful she had managed to keep hold of it. She clung to the ladder for a few seconds, regaining her hand strength. The dim lights had stopped flickering and were now dimming to blackness before surging back. Kimber could tell the generators were on their last leg. She decided to move quickly, because if the power did die completely, Tristan would probably race outside to get them back online.
Kimber turned around on the ladder and faced across the shaft. The doors were close, only about four and a half feet away. The flare on the elevator was starting to fade, and Kimber reached into her belt for the second one. She did not like the idea of using her last source of emergency light, but at least getting rid of the flare would mean getting rid of some extra weight. She silently thanked Tristan and quickly kissed the flare, before igniting it and tossing it onto the elevator twenty feet below her.
Time stood still as the flare fell through the air. Kimber held her breath hoping it didn’t bounce off the metal roof and tumble the additional sixty feet down. It did not. It landed with a dull thud and sizzled next to its waning brother. Kimber bit back down on the handle of the briefcase and tried not to look down. Not because she was scared--she was way beyond that--but because she could not afford to have her vision washed out by the beam of the flashlight. She gripped the first rung and eased her weight onto it, her legs fully dangling.
The task would have been easy had it not been for her shoulder sack and the briefcase. The extra weight made the rungs seem even slimmer under Kimber’s grip. One-by-one, she made her way across, testing each rung before she fully trusted her weight on it. She was almost across when the power cut out. The space around her went pitch black, the only light remaining coming from the concentrated red flare below and the flashlight’s upward bound yellow beam. Kimber’s attention zeroed in on the ladder against the wall, and she recklessly swung across the last few rungs.
When Kimber got to the wall, she did not even take the time to catch her breath. She ripped the briefcase out of her mouth and screamed Tristan’s name, looking around frantically for something to hit or throw at the metal doors. If Tristan was there, she needed him to hear her. Her shouts grew shriller as her thoughts grew more desperate. The idea of throwing the flashlight even crossed her mind. Thankfully, she heard scraping and knocking on the other side of the doors first, and her flashlight was kept safe in hand.
Chapter XVII
Kimber could feel the layers of panic sloughing off into the deep pit below as the scrapes and banging got louder on the metal doors. She could hear Tristan’s muffled shouts even though she could not quite make out what he was saying. She shouted back, knowing he would not be able to understand her any better, relieved he was on the other side of the shaft’s exit, instead of outside trying to re-crank the generators.
Kimber clung to the ladder as the second flare below began to fizzle out. She did not mind waiting, and after the initial excitement of hearing Tristan’s voice, she stopped yelling. Tristan did not stop though, and she could not help smiling when she heard a loud bang, followed by a loud clank, followed by an undiscernible profanity. She didn’t know what he was doing, but she could tell he was working hard to get the heavy doors open.
Finally, she saw a crack appear between the two doors. Tristan had hammered in a chisel. The gap was only a few millimeters wide, but he quickly pried it into a few inches with a flat head screwdriver. A small object was slipped in between the doors and when the screwdriver was removed, the doors squeezed in on the object. Tristan was wedging the doors apart, inches at a time. The hammer itself became his next prying tool and Kimber could see the head of the hammer as it was wedged into the thin crack.
With a grunt, Tristan heaved on the hammer and when the doors moved, he slid the flathead lengthwise into the gap. The space was now big enough that he could fit his knee and foot in. Using his leg as the leverage mechanism, he pushed and pulled with all his might. The doors had been designed not to be opened like this, and they did not budge easily. Tristan was strong though, and his strength was supplemented by stubbornness and adrenaline. To Kimber’s delight, the doors moved a couple feet this time.
Tristan squeezed his entire body in between
the doors now. His back was flat, and he raised his knee up to push. Kimber could see half of his body, the muscles in his legs clearly straining against the jaws that did not want to open. With one last push, he pressed the doors apart and straightened his leg out to take the pressure off his muscles. With a sigh of relief, and a quirky smile, he ducked his head into the now open space and looked over at Kimber who was hanging off the service ladder.
“Well hi,” he said, trying to mask his panting.
“Well hello yourself.” Kimber grinned. “I’ve never been so happy to hear such profanity in all my life!”
Tristan beamed with an endearing cheekiness. He was clearly proud to have gotten the door open and looked nothing short of euphoric that she had made it up here safely.
“What are you doing way over there?” he asked playfully. “We need you over here.”
“I’m going to need a little help with that. See, I told you you’d come in handy.” She delivered the cheesiest wink she could muster, and Tristan laughed out loud.
“Hang tight. Um, literally,” he said and leaned away from the elevator shaft and into the hallway. With a few grumbles and grunts, he managed to grab hold of something while keeping his leg in the door. Kimber heard something dragging and soon saw a tipped over wooden chair shimmy its way into the gap. Tristan lifted both of his legs and let the doors crunch in around the chair’s long axis. When he was certain the chair would hold the pressure, he removed his body from the space and carefully leaned over it to figure out how to get to Kimber.
