The lower story of the building was little more than an open factory floor, with scattered benches and debris giving no clue as to what had been manufactured there in the days before the nukecaust. Dean felt uneasy with the floor being so open. It would be all too easy for any sec to enter and see them immediately. The sooner they were past this obstacle, the better.
Danny led them to a staircase that spiraled up the far wall, leading to a door set in the wall. Dean followed him, eyes scanning the walls and the door set into the front of the building for any signs of activity.
“Come on, let’s move it,” he murmured to Danny.
“We’re there,” the youngster replied as he opened the door. Dean swung through after him, taking one last recce before closing the door gently. They were on a mezzanine, with a washroom and more stairs leading to the upper level. The hum of the generator and equipment was louder now, but there was still no sign of any life, for which Dean was grateful.
“How the hell does Baron Al get the fuel to run the generator all the time?” he asked of Danny.
“I don’t really know. The weird thing is that fuel’s the one thing Charity’s never been short of for trade. I think he has some good trading allies for that, because he cultivated them. But that’s why he’s in the shit over the lack of food. He’s been too busy chasing this dream to look out for the people he rules over. Which is kinda dumb in the long run, ’cause there’s more of them than there are of him and his sec.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dean answered, not bothering to add that he had seen fear rule over many a ville, and numbers and manpower weren’t necessarily the most important things.
They took the last few steps from the mezzanine to the upper story, and Danny opened the wooden door at the top, pausing only to check the room before turning to Dean with a huge grin on his face.
“Welcome to wonderland,” he said, ushering Dean into the room.
“Hot pipe!” Dean whistled, all other words failing him at the sight with which he was greeted.
The room ran the length of the building, and like the floor below was open plan. Rich velvet drapes and hangings ran around the walls, blocking the windows and giving the room an altogether richer, warmer feel. The floor space was occupied by vast banks of comps, vids and other electronic pieces the use of which was, at this moment, a mystery to Dean. In front of the drapes in one corner stood a row of battered old metal filing cabinets, with an ornate wooden writing desk to one side of them.
“This,” Danny said, encompassing the old tech with a gesture, “is the hardware. But that—” he pointed with his Uzi to the filing cabinets. “—is where the real treasure lay, I’d say. I didn’t pay it much attention back in the day, ’cause I was only young. But now…that’s a different matter. I’d say that those drawers probably contain all the secrets to make this stuff viable again. And that, my friend, is where we should be looking.”
He strode across the room, pointedly ignoring the winking lights and gentle hum of the comp consoles, and the flickering images that played again and again on vid and terminal screens. Dean followed him, although he couldn’t help but be distracted by the old tech equipment, the likes of which had always held a fascination for him. Some of it he recognized from redoubts, or from the Brody school, where there had been a certain amount of old tech that some of the teachers had tried to teach to the students, most of whom had more pressing concerns. But, like his father, Dean had always had an interest. Ryan had always been fascinated by the snippets of preDark culture that he could find, almost as though he could somehow unravel the secrets of the past and use them to make the present better for himself. Without anything ever being said between them, Dean had always shared this interest, with a more practical bent toward the old tech.