Esau nods curtly then removes a pistol from his bucket. I kneel and do the same, check the ammo, the safety. I really hope these are not needed. The chances that we arrive there while anyone else is present are low, except for those scientists.
Get in. Inject the code. Download onto the USB. Take some photos too.
Then we go.
Fifteen minutes, tops, is what we decided would be ideal. And if nothing is down there? Pray there is. In a few seconds we will know.
The elevator floor numbers drop below ground level and keep going, motor humming in the background.
B2lights up.
I adjust my hand on the pistol, raise it, and aim at the door. Esau copies me.
The elevator opens onto an empty corridor with a ten-foot-high ceiling. We both exit, walking with our guns extended and ready. We considered locking the elevator doors open but that might trigger alarms.
Nothing moves down here, and there is no sound, except for those distant motors and the click and squeak of our boots on the polished gray floor. The corridor has three doors on the right. The left side has a glass window further along before it changes back to white wall. A single white door is visible toward the end of the corridor.
Esau reaches the glass section first and peers in.
“Fucking hell. Bingo,” he whispers. He points in then lowers his gun and stares.
Two rows of glass coffins are lined up before us, oriented so we can see the bodies inside them from head to toe. If they’re frozen, the air must be low humidity as nothing has clung to those transparent curved covers.
“Niamh. It’s her,” he croaks, dropping his pistol to his side. “I was right.” His anguish is plain. His face is stiff, his mouth working as if to express something he has no words for.
I scan the rest of the room. The door is placed where a red rectangular roof and walls box in the row ahead. Perhaps that’s a scanner to check for anything that might mess with however the cryogenics works. I don’t know.
“Come.” Esau beckons me and raises his gun. Composure regained, but I’d hate to get in his way.
We have the right floor, right place, and this, what we are seeing, it will take down the institute and Clay.
“Take it smooth and easy,” I tell his back. “Fifteen minutes and two have gone.”
He nods curtly.
The white door opens like cream sliding on butter. No sound comes from the hinges.
Paired and level with each other, we advance into the room. Past the red walls of this entry section, there are four coffins in this row and a control area to the right, or I’m assuming it is that. Ahead of us, the ceiling remains ten feet high, at least, and is festooned with thick cables. Overhead, in this red section, a gantry is locked to the ceiling, with a forklift-style claw hooked out of way.
Once past the red entry, I relax and lower my gun. I point to the right where a set of screens shows a schematic of each cryo coffin with various data updating constantly.
“That’s a USB port.” I draw out the new card that Rasmus coded and toss it to Esau. He kneels and plugs it in. A box with instruction requests and dropdowns appears on the screen. He manages to click something, making it vanish.
“I hope that was it.”
He shrugs. “Probably.”
“Pull it out when we leave.”
“That’s what my last girlfriend said.”
I smile. “Ha.”
As we pass coffin after coffin of frozen people, all with pieces of them missing or gaping wounds, and three coffins containing only assorted limbs, I cannot help but be sad. I’m rocked knowing this was me, too, once.
They may not be able to create me yet, here, in this world, but it will happen. The knowledge has escaped. It’s a Pandoras Box situation. The influence of the Large Hadron Collider is not something I understand, but others will figure it out.
Is this bad?
