Approaching the door booted up the console. It was an old-style touchscreen that lit up in blue and asked for an access code.
Aiden’s heart hammered in his chest. This was it. The hideout. It existed, just like Darren had said it would. Goosebumps covered every inch of his body even if the suit was maintaining a suitable temperature.
He knew. He could feel it. The truth inside waiting to be found. All he had to do was take that final step.
Trust once more in Darren’s words.
Aiden keyed in the passcode on the access terminal. NJ-O4A-RST.
The blue of the screen changed to green, and the door opened.
Chapter 24
The decontamination and airpressure chamber hissed like an angry beast. It sealed itself shut once Aiden was in position, and a square of blue light expanded outward from the middle of the ceiling, thinning out into an outline by the time it reached the edges. From there, the four strips slid down the ridged metal walls and performed the scan, converging in the middle of the floor then rescanning the room again on their way back up. The air-filtration system came online shortly after and the sign above the door Aiden had come through turned red, while the one across from him changed from blue to green. A click reverberated through the room as the door unlocked and slid up, revealing an elevator.
Removing his helmet once it indicated the air was breathable, Aiden stepped in. He was taken underground and had to key in the access code again before gaining entry into the heart of the hideout. He followed a narrowtunnel illuminated by orange service lights, emerging onto a metal ramp which overlooked a spacious cavern.
Wow.
The chamber was perhaps three, four times as wide and high as the mess hall in Horizons and most likely part of a larger cave system that lurked beneath the surface of the asteroid. Sliding walls separated the space into five sections, each illuminated in a different color, except the one in the middle, which remained dark.
Transforming and equipping this hideout must have taken a great deal of time and effort.Money, too…
Aiden took the stairs to the ground level and walked through the first section. It seemed to be a control/strategy area if the dozen screens and computers were anything to go by, but he didn’t linger there, more intrigued by the mysterious center. It came alive with his approach, revealing a war-room-like set up, with an interactive map of the Solar system encased inside a hexagonal table. Computers crowded the table and two holoboards hung on metal cords at its far end. Beyond them, Aiden could spy the hideout’s remaining two sections which seemed to comprise living quarters, a lounge and a training area.
Did Darren, an ex-shipping mercenary, own this? Perhaps smugglers made more than people suspected.
As Aiden took in the impressive interior, more questions joined the ones residing in his mind.What was this place exactly? What was its purpose?And if Darren did own it, how had the police missed it?
Darren’s riddle came to mind, making Aiden frown. He’d only been given a way to find Bea and the passcode.Was it possible that Darren didn’t actually know the exact location of the hideout then?
It made sense. If Darren wanted to ensure that the authorities wouldn’t find this place, then he himself not knowing could guarantee its location remained a secret as long as nothing else could be traced to it.
Aiden tried to start up a few of the computers, but couldn’t get past the security prompts as the passcode didn’t work for them. Moving on from the war room, he did a quick tour of the training area. He found nothing useful there, save for a mysterious hangar door he couldn’t get to open, and continued to the living quarters. They reminded him of the suite in Luna’s Nymphs with their gray and white tones, even if the furniture itself was closer to contemporary than Victorian.
In any case, the lounging area wasn’t where Aiden would find whatever truth Darren had sent him to find, so he headed back to the war room to try the computers again. On the way there, he noticed a corridor with a door behind the kitchenette. He’d totally missed that from his vantage point on the ramp, likely so because of the thick columns on either end of the cupboards’ wall.
Aiden circled the marble breakfast bar and slipped into the wide corridor formed by the columns. The door was unlocked and he entered what looked to be a master bedroom. It was bigger than the one in his condo and came with a couch and a small study area in one corner, a walk-in closet to the left of the adjacent en-suite and a massive four-poster bed like in Luna’s Nymphs. Despite its pretentiousness though, the bed looked extremely comfortable, calling out to Aiden to lie down and forget about this craziness at least for a few hours.
Shooing away the tempting need to do just that, he turned his attention to the desk. He stifled a yawn as he found a customized Virtual Reality set hooked to a chargingport and two folders stamped with different seals. He opened the top folder first.
The beginning of the correspondence in it dated back to the 2050s and spanned decades. The contents were gibberish, therefore, encoded, and the only thing he managed to obtain were the names of the two correspondents—PDL and GN Riley. No addresses. The state of the second folder was much the same, but the code was different, along with the nicknames of the senders—Lu and white raven. The letters inside were from twenty years ago, offering a bit of an overlap with the dates of those from the first folder.
Aiden massaged the left side of his head, trying to alleviate the nasty throbbing there. He had two folders of what seemed to be a secret correspondence between two sets of people, but with no decrypting software or a cypher, he had no way of working out the actual contents. He could have a go at cracking the codes manually, he supposed, but he doubted he had that kind of time—and mental capacity—when he had to be back to Europa tomorrow.
So, what was he supposed to do then?Given the secrecy around the hideout and the fact that these documents were encrypted, he didn’t think that taking them with him to Horizons so he could demand an explanation from Darren was a good idea. And then there was PI Deverson’s warning…
Aiden scowled at the folders and felt a twitch along the side of his neck. Should he go to the police? But they’d gaslit him so far, lied about so many things, and dismissed him so many times… Plus, if the authorities didn’t know about this place, then him just being here could get him in trouble. Maybe even make him an accomplice. Giving up this location wasn’t really an option.
Popping a painkiller, Aiden put the documents aside and started up the VR set. Thankfully, it didn’t ask for a password, but the elation at that was short-lived as a message came up on the screen, informing him the device’s storage was empty.
“Seriously…” He slumped in the chair, his brain already going foggy. He fumbled with the set’s chip port in hopes that the damn thing was misaligned and thus showing empty, but it made no difference. “Fuck!”
This was too damn much. He was tired, sleep-deprived, hungry and angry and all he could show for it was a useless VR set and a bunch of documents he couldn’t even decipher. He should’ve never bothered with Darren Howe’s fucking riddles, should’ve just killed him. With PI Deverson’s help, maybe he would’ve gotten here eventually anyway…
Aiden slammed his fists on the desk, knocking the folders off it. Paper scattered and fell off, landing on the floor with aclink.
He snapped his attention to the mess he’d made. Paper didn’t normally land with a clink.
