The metal was rough under the layer of foul ooze. An oily gloss covered everything but the sharpest edges. She felt around until she located the latch, which was recessed into the door. Holding the .38 pistol at the ready, she shoved the door inward. A gentle illumination spilled over her. The fire-retardant ooze crested over the lip at the bottom of the sealed door and glopped into the room.
Without saying a word, Krysty stepped across the threshold, keeping herself in profile to make a smaller target. Her senses gave her an uncertain feeling that no one else was in the room.
Computer mainframes lined the walls around her, red, amber, white, green and orange lights flickering against their surfaces. A steady hum permeated the room, then blowers activated, making the area sound more hollow than it had only a moment ago.
Krysty got the impression that the operation hadn’t been a large one, but it had flexed plenty of cybernetic muscle, judging from the hardware she could see. She crossed the room to the nearest workstation and sat, placing the pistol on the desktop beside her.
She recognized the monitoring system from the numerous screens it had available. All of them were linked to a keyboard. “Okay,” she told herself, “the drone had power, and the fire systems, and there’s light in here. There’s got to be power at this level.”
She sat tensely on the edge of the swivel chair after hitting the power button she found on the edge of the keyboard. Around her she heard the sharp crackle and chug of the mainframes coming online, then the intake of internal fans even over the hiss of the vents and air system.
There were eight screens before her, glassed-over ebony that only hinted at any kind of depth. Whoever had designed the room had gone to lengths to keep it hidden from the rest of the installation. It stood to reason that whoever used it would also want access to whatever else was available in the complex.
With a rapid string of liquid pops, five of the screens flared to life. The other three remained blank, shot through with occasional bursts of static. The most centrally located screen, slightly smaller than the others, held a menu in lime green letters skating across black velvet Security Camera Uplink.
Numbers followed, as well as brief listings of where the cameras were. View three was an exterior view, tied in through the Maintenance Program, according to the menu. Krysty was disappointed as she looked up at the dark screen in front of her, marked View Three. Evidently the exterior cameras were the first to go during the attack in 2001.
She checked the menu again, finding a listing for Checkpoints, Interior. Another glance at the screens before her and she found View Two still operable. Though Mildred had the most knowledge of computers, she had taught Krysty the basics. She tagged the keyboard and brought up another menu in the lower right of the second screen, transparent so it didn’t wipe out any of the details.
The screen darkened and filled with the cavernous vault of one of the other tunnel shafts. She didn’t know where it was or what it showed. The menu on the screen listed five other possible views. Elevator bars allowed her to scan even more. She worked her way through them. Most of them opened up only onto dead screens. There’d been considerable damage done inside the complex, either by the bombing, the systems collapsing or intentional changes in the programming. Lines ran across some screens “Seized by outside source.”
“Sacrificed to prevent disclosure of this unit.”
On the next selection, though, she found Ryan. He was dodging back inside the entrance they’d come through, with Jak, Mildred and J.B. surrounding him, covering his retreat. Bullets chopped into the sides of the entrance.
Ryan went into a rolling dive on one shoulder, hurrying out of the killzone afforded through the entrance. Through it, Krysty saw the war buggy perched on the sand, the tires churning as the driver threw his vehicle into gear.
Then the entrance came apart in a terrific explosion that seemed even more horrendous because no sound came through the speakers. Dust and flying debris obscured the camera’s view, and a heartbeat later took it out completely.
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