by J. Thorn
Nasty things made their homes in the dark tunnels. Rats. Valk. Was there much of a difference? She didn’t think so.
Leta followed Keana up the steps and into the bunker. It was much larger inside than it looked at first glance from the outside, and she supposed that this huge first room must take up much of the building on the surface. They passed a cluster of stacked tables and chairs, which Leta presumed must be the trading post when the marketplace was in full swing. Now it had been pushed to the side to make room for the mass of people entering the building.
“Young folk to the left and down the stairs, please,” said a voice from nearby.
Leta turned to see an older man in gray clothing standing and waving, pointing folks to the stairs behind him.
Keana raised her eyebrows and stopped walking. “Aren’t we going in together?”
The girl glanced over her shoulder at the queue behind them. Leta followed Keana’s gaze and then looked at the gathering crowd inside the large room. All elderly. The young were no longer with them.
“All young folk to head down the stairs to be assigned their quarters first,” said the man.
“Why can’t we go together, sir?”
“It’s just a formality. You’ll be with your Grammy soon enough.”
Leta bristled but then realized she’d been called much worse.
“What’s quarters?” asked Keana.
The man smiled. “You seem frightened, my dear. Please, this isn’t to upset anyone. It’s just that if we don’t separate people entering the bunker into their dormitory groups for quarter assignments—” the man paused. “If we don’t sort you into where you will be staying, and who you are sharing your room with, it would be a little chaotic in here. It’s just a wee bit of process until we have everyone organized and settled into their new homes.”
Keana crossed her arms and looked from Leta to the old man. “I thought I’d be staying with her.”
The man shook his head. “We have different facilities set up to help manage with different age groups.”
“It’s alright, girl.” Leta took Keana by the arm. “You’ll be fine. I’m sure we will see each other once this is all sorted out.”
With a huff, Keana nodded and started down the stairs. “I’ll see you soon then,” she said.
Leta nodded, and watched the girl come to the bottom of the stairs and turn the corner, swallowed by the bunker.
“I’ll see you soon,” she muttered before allowing the gray uniformed man to usher her into the main chamber.
At least I hope I will, she thought. Because now more than before, she was starting to get an uneasy feeling about all of this.
Chapter 26
Katrina sat at the console, watching intently. The visual on the screen changed every five seconds, each slice of footage showing the interior of a small room or a view of the larger atrium, the mess hall beyond that, the library, or the exercise courtyard. She knew she could choose which of the hundreds of cameras to look through just by pressing a few keys on the numeric keypad, but it was easier to just watch.
For the first hour that the clan’s children had been inside their new home there had been obvious unease. Many of them had found a seat in the main atrium and sat around, looking confused and out of sorts until they were handed room keys. But once most of them had settled in their dormitories, found their beds and their own cabinets to store their personal items there was a significant change in their behavior, at least she thought. It was difficult to tell just by watching moving images.
She leaned forward and tapped the number 001 into the keypad and the screen switched from the image of a dormitory where two young women sat talking on their beds to the main atrium view. It was an almost overhead angle, though it showed most of the massive room clearly. The ceiling of the atrium was easily a hundred feet from the ground, and all the cameras up that high had been angled steeply downward.
“When do we get audio on this?” Katrina turned to an assistant seated a few feet away. The man was also watching the screens, making notes on a pad in front of him between the changing visuals.
“No news yet, ma’am. The systems were tested, and the cameras are fine, but there is still a problem with the routing. We’ve got people on it but some of the cabling is old and needs replacing.”
“Hmm.” Katrina sat back in her chair and sighed. It was unfortunate, but quite common. Many of the centuries old systems across the base, even those shielded from the outside world, were so old that they should have failed long ago. “And don’t tell me, we don’t have enough cabling in supplies?”
“Plenty of cabling, but not the correct gauge. We’ve got large supplies of electrical grade, but not audio or network grade.”
“And we can’t salvage some from somewhere?”
“Only some of the external cables in the city, maybe.”
Abernathy leaned over and stared into Katrina’s eyes. “We agreed they would not be touched.” The older man had been seated near the entrance during the whole process of welcoming the clan folk.
“I know.” Katrina folded her arms and leaned back in her chair but her eyes never left Abernathy. “And anyway, we can’t have our people out there in the city to fetch it. Not now at least. It’s too late for that.”
She rose and walked over to the large panel of glass at the far end of the observation room and looked though. The view was almost the same as that of the camera that she had watched from, a down angled overlook of the atrium and all of the balconies clearly visible.
“Is everyone inside?” she asked.
“There’s nobody else in line,” said the assistant. “So we presume they have sent us all that will enter.”
“I’ve not seen Seren.” Abernathy frowned. “She was meant to be with them.”
“And she is,” said Katrina. “I saw to it myself.”
Abernathy stood up, pushing his chair into the console hard enough to make the assistant flinch.
Katrina sighed. “I didn’t tell you because I knew you would be looking for her and I wanted you in here where you are needed. I need your eyes on them. You’re the best at noticing anything untoward.”
“What do you mean you took care of it? I haven’t seen her at all. She’s not in there. I would have spotted her.”
“No,” said Katrina. “And you won’t. She isn’t in there. Yet.”
“Yet?” Abernathy crossed the room to stand next to her. “Then where is she?”
“We had to detain her temporarily.”
“Detain her?”
The assistant looked at Abernathy as the older man took a step toward Katrina.
“It was for the best,” said Katrina.
“How so?”
“Because she would have chosen to stay out there. Would you have wanted that? Would you have preferred that I had given her the choice? Let her leave to fight their enemies and die out there? I would have thought that you of all people would understand the choices we have to make.”
“Of course I don’t want her out there, but you’ve imprisoned her instead?” Abernathy’s voice rose and then broke at the end of his question. He didn’t wait before asking another. “Is that what you are saying?”
“Yes,” said Katrina. “But only temporarily. I assure you I have no intention of keeping the girl locked up. She will join the rest very soon.”
“So where is she?”
Katrina turned her back to the window and pointed to the far end of the hall. “Room 19 on the first floor. We shut her in the main Atrium and waited until she went into one of the rooms.”
“And locked her in?” asked Abernathy.
“You make this sound like we are the monsters, Abe. Let me remind you that we are saving the lives of all of those in there.” She tapped at the window. “I did what I needed in their best interests, and when the others have settled, we will release the lock on her door.”
“And how long will that be?”
“In a few hours.” Katrina pointed
at the children in the atrium before facing Abernathy again. “We can’t deliver food to her now that the others have occupied the halls, so we will need to release her soon anyway. Are you quite finished?”
Abernathy went back to his seat at the door and sat down. He gave a single nod, but said nothing as he folded his arms across his chest.
Katrina rolled her eyes and picked up a clipboard, running her finger down the side and flipping pages while spinning to face the assistant. “Are all the defenses surrounding the halls in place? Are we clear?”
“Yes ma’am,” said the assistant. “We finished the installations about thirty minutes ago.”
“Good. Then let’s lock the access points and evacuate the tunnels. I want those watchers live as soon as possible. There are already large movements in the outer tunnels and I’m not risking the Valk getting anywhere near an entrance.”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Are the other clan folk in the outer hall as planned?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Good,” said Katrina. “Then send word to lock down the base entirely, and to open their exit point. That should give them time to leave before the Valk are anywhere near us.”
Katrina heard Abernathy’s chair hit the console yet again. This time, she didn’t bother to turn around and look at him when he spoke.
“I thought the vote on sending the elder clan folk back outside was indecisive? I don’t remember it being decreed that they would be sent back outside.”
“The clan folk decided for us,” said Katrina.
Abernathy frowned again. “How so?”
“By sending us enough young people to fill nearly all of the space we had available. We had a limit, and if we were able to fit them, we would have, but the dormitories are full.”
“So we had the clans believe we were taking them in, just to send them back out again? Deception. Was it really necessary?”
“We did what we needed to secure the clan’s young.” Katrina stared into the atrium. “I did what we needed to secure the base.”
Chapter 27
Seren sat staring at the wall, her mind blank. She had no idea how long she had been locked in her room, but she knew that it had been at least four or five hours since they had brought her anything to eat or drink, and hours before that she had finished pounding on the door and screaming herself hoarse.
If only she had stayed out in the main area and not been curious about the rooms. That heart—sinking feeling that had hit her when she had first looked into the row of small rooms and heard the door click shut behind her was now replaced with a numbness, and a feeling of helplessness. She’d looked in some of the larger dormitories first, and not been trapped, so when she had entered the corridor at the far end of the atrium, she had already forgotten to be cautious. When the door shut behind her in the small room she hadn’t been alarmed, but the heavy clunk that followed sent her running to the door only to find the handle wouldn’t open it.
She had been there at least three days, she thought. It had to be, and the isolation was too much. She was used to being free, running with her wolves through the woods, not trapped in a small cubicle under the ground.
And it turned out that holding someone captive was exactly what the room had been designed to do. There was a tiny window in the door that looked out onto the corridor, but it faced a painted white wall. There had been other doors, she remembered, all identical to this one. There was also a tiny hatch at waist height that she discovered was for delivering food to the cell without making contact with its occupant.
A prison cell.
So that is what they had resorted to, the bunker people. They had imprisoned her. But for what reason?
You’re a fool, she thought. They imprisoned you to keep you down here, out of the way, while...while what? They were taking in the old and the young, but no one else. Were they planning something that wasn’t obvious to her?
Did Abernathy have anything to do with this? The older man befriended her, or so she had thought, and they hadn’t kept her in the bunker before. They had let her leave, knowing that she may not come back.
She had trusted them.
No, he wouldn’t do this. This had to be Katrina working on her own, or with a few others. But why her?
Because you refused to stay, she thought. She offered and you said no. So, she forced you. How many others were imprisoned? Was it just her? Most were coming willingly to escape the Valk, but she felt she was needed in the fight, and Sorcha could help.
She thought of Sorcha and the other wolves, they weren’t totally trapped, and could escape if needed, but they were inside an enclosure on the base. What if the Valk got to them and she wasn’t there? Sorcha could lead the pups away, she was sure. She had to be sure.
From the other side of the door came a clunking sound.
She spun toward it, looking first to the food hatch, but that remained shut. It wasn’t ration time, then. So what was the noise? She hurried from the small bed and ran to the door, grasping the handle and pulling down.
The door opened a few inches.
Seren pulled the door open all the way and stepped out into the corridor, almost walking straight into Gideon as he exited a door opposite.
“Seren? What are you doing in here? What did you do to get locked up?”
Gideon wiped his eyes as if Seren was nothing but an apparition.
“They locked you up too?”
Before he could reply, Seren hurried along the corridor to the door at the end, the one leading out into the atrium. This door had no window or hatch, but she knew where it led to anyway. She tried the handle, but it wouldn’t budge.
Still locked in, she thought, and gave the door a hard kick.
“Hey, what’s she up to?” asked a voice from behind her.
Seren turned to see two other boys standing behind Gideon. She frowned. “You were all locked up?”
“Yeah,” said Gideon. “We kinda found a stash of stuff underground and accidentally ended up in one of their subways.” He shrugged. “This is Jin and Romey.”
“Whoa,” said Jin. “Aren’t you the wolf girl? Didn’t you blow that blokes face off?”
“Her name is Seren you idiot,” said Gideon.
“This doesn’t make sense.” Seren looked at Gideon and he shrugged. “We have to get out of here,” she said. “For all I know the fighting could already have started. She hammered on the door.
“We’re with you,” said Gideon. “Though I think my father already decided we were to go in the bunker with all the others.”
Seren stopped banging on the door and turned back to him. “What others? I’ve been in here for three days. Katrina mentioned taking some people in. Has it already happened?”
“Yes. Anyone under sixteen, the elderly, pregnant women and women still looking after small kids. That was what was agreed. They were supposed to be going into the bunker over the next couple of days and staying for two months, or something like that.”
“I wasn’t gonna stay,” said Romey.
“Me neither,” said Jin.
Gideon slapped Jin on the side of the head. “You were if my father said you were. Mother said most of the young scavenge teams were going in.”
“So they could already be in the complex somewhere,” said Seren. “We need to—“
Before she could finish what she was saying, there was another clunking noise, and the main door that led out into the atrium swung open.
Seren stepped into the huge room, followed by Gideon and his two friends, and was taken aback for a moment as she looked around. The place was filled with young people. Some sitting on sofas talking, others played the games that she had seen lined along the back wall. A group of mothers sat with smaller children in an area in the middle that they had cleared, and a group of boys stood near a pair of open double doors that she hadn’t spotted before, and she could hear shouts from beyond them.
One of the boys turned and looked surprised to see her,
and it took her a moment to recognize Declan.
Seren hurried over to him.
“Where have you been?” asked Declan.
Seren pointed back to the corridor. “Locked up. I’ve been in there for three days. When did you get here?”
“About three hours ago. Isn’t this place amazing? They have everything here.”
“Didn’t you hear me?” Seren leaned in and lowered her voice to a harsh whisper. “They trapped me in here, locked up for three days. And Gideon and his friends were locked up too.”
Declan frowned. “Why would they do that? They’ve done nothing but help us so far.”
Seren shook her head. “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”
She walked across the room to the main double doors, where Katrina had stood when she locked her in. She knocked on the door and waited for a moment as Declan and the others caught up with her.
No answer.
She knocked again.
“I think you are supposed to use this,” said Declan, pointing at a box on the wall.
Seren saw that it was a thing Abernathy had called an intercom, another thing she didn’t really understand, but she knew what it did. She jabbed at the button.
“Hello?”
No answer, so she pressed the button again, this time holding it down.
“Hello?”
“Can I help you?” replied a voice that sounded slightly mechanical. “Is there a problem.”
“I want to speak to Abernathy or Katrina. This is Seren. There’s been a mistake. I shouldn’t be in here.”
