James Axler – Cold Asylum

“Fireblast!” He stopped a few yards away from it and shook his head. The thought of having to go back and make a third jump was physically sickening.

Then he saw that there was something printed on the pale cream wall by the elevator door. Fortunately the overhead lights were all full bright; otherwise he could easily have missed the time-faded writing.

Ryan moved in, glancing automatically behind to make sure that nobody was threatening him.

“Green C M, one, nine, blue five, E E red.”

A ten-symbol code showed how triple-secret Cerberus had been in Overproject Whisper. What was amazing was that it had actually been written on the wall. Ryan knew enough about the way the military had run its redoubts to be certain that it would probably have been a capital offense to betray a code like that. His guess was that it had been done in the very last days.

The Washington bomb had gone off and the skies had darkened all across the planet with the preemptive and retaliatory strikes. Nukes rained in from their space launching platforms, as well as from buried silos and from ships and planes.

Evidence from other stripped redoubts showed how panic had overridden expert training in those last crazed hours. Here it was a fair bet that someone had lost control over B-ratings of personnel and access to codes, taking the easiest option and scribbling it on the wall so that no time would be wasted during what could have been the wild panic of evacuation.

Ryan turned and looked back along the corridor, whose steady curve prevented him from seeing more than sixty or seventy yards. He frowned and concentrated, closing his eye to try to listen better. There was a faint and regular sound, like boot heels clicking on bare stone.

But he’d passed a tiny leak in the roof a minute or so ago, which was steadily dripping water from an eroded crack in the concrete. He waited, deciding that it was the tumbling spots of liquid that he’d heard.

Green C M one nine bluefive

As he pressed each recessed button, the code was entered on a green liquid display above the panel, ready for confirmation. Ryan waited.

There was a slit beneath the controls that might have been used for personnel-coded ID cards. If that was also needed, then he was out of luck.

But after a couple of seconds the word “Accepted” flashed, and he heard the distant rumble of machinery. There was another small panel at the top of the door of the elevator, with two letters. U and D .

Up and Down.

The cage was coming steadily down toward him.

Ryan checked his chron again and saw that it had taken him nearly twenty minutes to walk from the mat-trans unit to the elevator, a sign the size of the redoubt above him.

The elevator took two minutes to descend, arriving with a pneumatic hissing of brakes and the flicker of light behind the transparent letter D .

And nothing happened.

“Come on, you bastard,” Ryan urged, unable to believe his ill luck. To have gotten this far and have the astounding luck to find the code for the elevator, and now the door wouldn’t open. He kicked at it, hearing only the dull ringing thud of his boot on the inert metal.

The glowing golden light on the control panel shone cheerily, drawing Ryan’s angry stare, which changed to a slightly sheepish grin as he realized what a double-stupe he’d been.

For on the bottom was “Open Door.”

He pressed it and the door slid back.

The elevator was much larger than he’d expected. It was twelve feet square and capable of holding at least forty people.

Ryan hesitated before stepping in, listening again for the regular sound from along the corridor. But it had ceased. All was silent.

The cage rocked very slightly under his weight, and he immediately faced outward, the SIG-Sauer still in his right hand. But there was no sign of life. On the wall was another control panel, but this had only five buttons Up, Down, Open Door, Close Door and Alarm.

Ryan pressed the fourth, then the first, flexing his knees as the door shut. There was a distant whining sound from the driving engine, and the elevator began its ascent.