James Axler – Circle Thrice

Ryan held up the SIG-Sauer to silence him. “Yeah, we got the picture, Doc.”

“LOOKS CLEAR THAT THERE’S a single access down to the gateway part of the redoubt,” the Armorer said after they’d been walking and climbing for close to half an hour. “Covered between two and three miles already.”

Ryan nodded. He’d lost count of the side turns that had been locked and barred from them. There were discolored rectangular patches on the concrete walls where signs had been ripped down. They would probably have given them clues as to what the other sections of the complex had been.

Though, since access was impossible, it didn’t make a whole lot of difference.

The worry was that they would eventually reach an end to the wide passage, an end that was staked off like a fox’s den, giving them no choice but to return all the way to the gateway and try a jump out again.

“Is it my imagination, or is the air a tad fresher?” Ryan stopped and sniffed again.

After a few minutes of walking they’d dropped right down from triple-red to orange, which meant you could holster your blaster if you wanted, but you still kept well alert. It also meant that they’d stopped walking the extended skirmish line with Ryan at point and J.B. as rearguard.

“Could mean we’re nearing the top. Close to the exit,” J.B. guessed.

Ryan nodded. “Might be that. If the nuke power is drawing in any clean air from outside, it would be most obvious up here.”

Doc leaned a hand against the wall, picking at the crusted blood around his nose and mouth. “I had rather hoped that there might be ablution facilities somewhere close by. A wash and brushup would be most welcome.”

“Yeah. I stink of puke,” Jak said sourly.

“Wash’d do us all good after that horrific jump.” Mildred sniffed cautiously at herself. “Yeah. Can’t say my armpits are charmpits.”

They moved on.

THE EARTH WAS BARRED.

They stood in a huddle, dejected and downcast, looking at the single sec door that filled the end of the passage from side to side. It fitted flush all the way around the flanks, coming down to settle on the concrete floor without enough of a gap for an ant to crawl through.

“That’s it,” Krysty said. “Gaia! I really don’t want to face another jump just yet.”

“Nothing else to do.” Ryan bit his lip, feeling a surge of anger. “Fireblast! Even if we could have gotten through to find somewhere to clean up, with drinking water and mebbe beds for a night, then I’d have felt ready to jump again. But this” He glared at the blank wall of vanadium steel.

“I’ll just punch in code and open door,” Jak said, walking across with the lithe grace of the trained acrobat, light on the balls of his feet.

“Sure, and we’ll just sit here and wait for three thousand years while you try all the possible combinations,” Mildred said wearily.

The albino stood very close to the wall, peering short-sightedly from his pink eyes.

“What in the name of perdition is the young Ganymede doing?” Doc asked. “Does he seek the Holy Grail? The key to Rebecca? The Rosetta stone? The riddle of the Sphinx? The mystery of Kaspar Hauser?”

Ryan laughed, the sound startling and loud in the muffled stillness of the passage. “No. I know what it is he’s looking for.”

“Found it,” Jak called. “Need some way blackening it.” He smeared his hand over the film of dust on the sole of his combat boot, spitting in it and rubbing it into a gray paste. Carefully he wiped it on the wall beneath the code pad.

“You saw that they’d done this on other doors, didn’t you?” Ryan called.

“Yeah. But scratched out. Guessed might leave main-door code. People always forget it. Seen that in other redoubts.” He stared at the tiny incised markings, standing out dark against the cream concrete of the wall.

The others gathered around.

“Looks like a six, then two and nine,” Ryan said, “followed by two letters. An N and a W , then another two and an eight to finish.”