Page 61 of Asher

Except… they would have needed to travel back in time to be hidden in this cave more than fifty years ago. So… maybe not.

Still, I’ll feel better once Garrett’s on the ground. “Bring some pieces down for us to see,” I add, so it doesn’t seem like I’m being overprotective. Which I’m not. “Overprotective” implies a lack of reason, and I’m absolutely being reasonably protective.

To my relief, he starts shoving things into his pockets, then climbs back down the ladder. We crowd around him.

“Here, look at these.” Garrett pulls out five different metal pieces. One’s a cog, there are two bolts of different sizes, and some other things I don’t know the names of. “The crate is sectioned into compartments, and each one had a different type of part in it. There must be at least a few thousand of each of these.”

Micah takes one of the bolts and studies it. “It can’t be to expand the wall,” he says, almost to himself. “Why would you want to…”

We wait.

And wait.

“Why would you want to what?” Zac asks finally. Micah doesn’t respond, just staring at the bolt, so Zac elbows him in the side.

“Ow! What?”

“Why would you want to what?” Zac repeats.

“Why would I want to what, what?”

“I’m going to kill you,” I threaten him, and he shakes his head.

“But I haven’t done any—”

“Okay,” Garrett interrupts, catching hold of my arm. “Let’s all just calm down. Angry people on a frozen mountain is how documentaries about murder get made, and I don’t want to be in one.” Before I can work out what he means by that, he turns to Micah. “Before you started thinking so hard we could smell smoke coming from your brain, you said ‘why would you want to…’ So now’s the part where you tell us what you were thinking about.”

Micah pulls a face. “It’s a theory. It might be wrong. It’s definitely farfetched.”

“As farfetched as this?” Garrett waves an arm at the crates and the wall.

“Maybe. Let me just…” Micah takes off toward the wall.

“If he leaves one more sentence unfinished, I’m going to finish him,” Zac mutters to me as we follow.

Micah stands in front of the wall… door? What should we be calling it? He seems to be studying the pieces of metal. Finally, he reaches out, takes hold of one piece, and pulls.

Nothing happens.

So he tries twisting it.

“Micah, what the fuck? Don’t break it,” I caution. Once we figure out what or where the key is, we want everything in working order.

“I’m not going to break it,” he says in a heavily condescending tone. “You forget that I’m an architect and an engineer, Asher. This kind of design comesnaturallyto— Fuck me!”

We all stare, not sure what to say. While he was giving his self-congratulatory little speech, he tried sliding the piece, and it moved.

“Was it supposed to do that?” Garrett asks.

Micah nods. “I think so.” He slides the piece back to its original position, then tries sliding it in a different direction. “I think… I think this might be a puzzle.”

“Like, you’re puzzled?” Zac asks. “We’re not surprised by that.”

“No, you idiot. Like a mechanical puzzle. I don’t think there’s a key for this door, I think the dooristhe key.”

I put my arm around Garrett and tug him closer as I try to work that out. “So you have to solve the puzzle to make the door open?”

“Yes. I think.”

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