Page 47 of Blushing Bride

CHAPTER11

Ryker

The outer façade of the lab was not what I’d expected it to be. On the surface, it appeared to be a lodge of sorts, or maybe a solitary wilderness research station at one point, but I knew it to be more than that.

All the evidence that Naomi had uncovered, along with the logs that Pacifica had revealed, indicated that this facility was once one of the top government research labs in the country. This didn’t look like that. The whole structure was overgrown. The vines were so thick in places that I would have to cut through with my machete.

“This doesn’t look big enough,” Naomi whispered.

Cautiously, the group made its way forward. The front door had fallen off its hinges, so I just walked through it, hearing the soft crunch of fallen glass beneath my feet. Water dripped from somewhere further inside. Somewhere off in the distance, a bird sang, and another cheerily answered.

I’d been on many acquisition missions before in search of old materials, much of it tools and resources that we’ve since lost the technology and knowledge to produce, but every journey was different. Each one an adventure of its own. This place had been completely overtaken by nature and I didn’t really know which way to turn or go next.

For a long while, I wandered through the first floor. I didn’t dare climb up the stairs due to the state of decay of the upper floors of the building. There were holes in the ceiling and whole sections of the second floor had collapsed, making much of the first level completely impassable. Eventually, Naomi shouted that she’d found a door. When I joined her, we found that it was locked.

At one point, it might have been powered by hydraulics, but it looked like it hadn’t seen electricity in a very long time. It was thick steel, but it had regular hinges like any other normal door.

I reached into my pocket for my multi-tool. I took my time and removed each screw with painstaking care until the door hung completely off its hinges. When it was ready, the other men and I pulled it out of place, tossing it to the floor with a deafening bang.

There was a steel staircase leading down into the ground behind where the door had been. The water damage was less here since the door had sealed much of this off. I leaned over the stairwell and looked down, careful not to put too much weight on it.

I wasn’t sure how many levels it descended, but it went far deeper than I’d expected. With my hope of finding the fusion cell once again intact, I turned back to Naomi.

“Nice find,” I grinned. Her face lit up as she joined me. I threw my arm out to stop her when she went to grab the metal barrier. Immediately, she pulled back and looked to me.

“I don’t trust it to hold anyone’s weight,” I explained.

“So, they hid the important parts of the labs underground,” she murmured.

“It does appear that way.”

Once I deemed the stairs to be mostly intact, I led the way down. When I opened the door to the first level beneath the ground surface, the entire structure started to tremble as if the place had been struck by an earthquake. All of us hit the decks, making our bodies take as little space as possible in case anything fell from above.

Dim red light lit up on the perimeter of the stairwell. Overhead lights sputtered several times, some of them burning out with a loud pop, but several powered on without further incident.

“Remarkable. There must be a generator somewhere,” I mumbled, more than a little astonished.

“Maybe powered on by movement,” Naomi offered.

Not trusting the locks, I propped open the door with my empty flask. The security team followed, and Naomi looked over her shoulder at them with annoyance. As the days had progressed, she had become less and less happy with their presence and to be honest, I understood. They made no effort to get to know her. Most of the time, they chatted among themselves and ignored her entirely.

My distrust of them had only increased as time went on.

Since the near accident with Jamie at the bridge, they’d only gotten stranger. Jamie wouldn’t look at her without getting this insanely guilty look on his face. Maybe he was too proud to admit that he got his ass saved by a woman and his ego was bruised, but I had a strange feeling that there was much more to it than that. Eventually, I was going to get to the bottom of it.

It made me uncomfortable enough that I didn’t leave her side the entire time we searched the lab. The first underground level seemed to be secure, but there were no hints of nuclear research anywhere to be found. Most of it seemed centered on the wildlife in the valley, at least on the surface. Further in, I found a few notebooks. When I pointed them out to Naomi, she quickly donned a pair of cloth gloves and very carefully opened the first.

Only some of it was readable. Much of it had either disintegrated or was written in some sort of shorthand that I couldn’t quite make out.

“I think they were researching poisons. Maybe airborne ones?” she whispered. She brushed her hand gently over the piece of paper. The date was mostly scuffed off, but the year 2041 was still readable.

There were a few computers in the room, but when I tried to power one on, it never got past a blue flickering screen.

“The cyberwar attacked even the most secure digital storage. I don’t think any of the computers will work down here,” Naomi explained, her expression a bit sad. I offered her a smile, hoping to comfort her and her face softened. She moved on when Seth came into the room behind me.

We made our way down the levels one by one. There were several more floors to go when we found a level that must have housed all the scientists who had worked here so long ago. I checked my watch and realized that it was really late.

“Why don’t we continue this tomorrow? Let’s pick beds for the night and search the other floors in the morning?”

---