Lunar Rising
Raven- Into the Depths of Tylius

Charlotte’s telling me her story, and I listen closely.

“Ever since I was small, I’ve been training with the RSA government.” She pushes her hair back, recalling her memories. “I thought I would always be alone, working for a government that wanted to use me. I don’t know what they had planned for me, but I didn’t want to live a life controlled by them. This part I already told you. I ran away and got to Tylius through stolen documents that allowed me to come.

“On the Teacup, I saw someone standing on the side, aiming a gun at me.” I let out a small gasp. “It turned out it was just a tranquilizer,” Charlotte reassures me. “He got me and set off a dust bomb so that he could take me without anyone noticing. Then he brought me to a room, and when I woke, there were two men in the room with me, the ones who brought me here. And this is where it gets extraordinary, Raven.” Charlotte lowers her voice. “They told me that they are my family. They showed me their eye color. White eyes.”

“What?” I back away as Charlotte carefully takes out her contacts. Green contacts. When she looks at me again, I become mesmerized by her astonishing white eyes. White irises!

She sees how speechless I am. “You see, Raven, out of those two people, one is my grandfather, and the other is my cousin, Aiden.”

After putting her contacts back on, Charlotte then tells me about the hidden lab that she’s searching for. “This lab can be the key thing to help your experiments and inventions succeed. There’s equipment in there that have functions similar to the ones you may have in mind. The entire abandoned lab is like a vault of scientific knowledge.”

My interest spikes to the skies. “That’s cool,” I say. “I know I might not be on par with someone trained like you, but can I help you find the lab? If it really has what you say it has, it would mean a lot to me to have access to it.”

“Of course. I need you.” Her eyes are serious. “I overheard your dad when he was attending a night party with a female co-worker. It was a work party of some sort, to celebrate something they’ve done. I only heard snippets of valuable info, but I think your parents are involved with the government, trying to find the lab and destroy it.”

I try to take this all in, but my stubborn mind refuses to let go of the faith I had in my parents. “But my father is good! When he found out about the ozone layer’s truth two years ago, he was ecstatic. And now, you’re telling me he’s trying to destroy the lab that could bring it back?!”

“I don’t think he knows all the details, but he knows that the government wants to find the lab.”

I think this over. “That makes sense, I guess.” I remember Mom saying that there was a new project, one that Dad got a promotion for. “I guess when you put it all together…”

Charlotte taps her watch and whispers the passcode. She begins to look at a special map.

“What is that?” I peer at the watch. A blue holographic map has appeared on her arm.

“I nabbed it from the government a while back,” she explains. She points at a ton of red dots moving along her arm. “Those are people. Using this, I can take a look at the people on this floor. I can look at people on all levels if I adjust my settings.”

“Wow.” Charlotte must be a pretty good thief to steal this kind of tech from the government. “The government would never let you get your hands on this watch, would they?”

“Oh, I didn’t steal the watch. I stole the download file to get this app. And not to mention a bunch of other special apps.” Then she looks back at the map, adjusts the setting so that it only detects people on our level, and frowns. “Raven, you’re wrong. There are people on this floor.”

“What?” My heart leaps to my throat. “But this place is quiet! Nobody is around!”

She points at three red spots on her arm. “They’re just down the corridor. Probably came in through a different elevator tube, and quite recently. There are two on this floor, and one is a more secluded one, in the room that the three people are in. Since they’re being secretive, I’ll bet they might have juicy info. I’m going to move to the next room and turn on Super-Ear to listen in. By the way they’re all clustered together, they’re probably talking.”

I don’t agree with her plan. It’s dangerous, but Charlotte assures me that since she knows the whereabouts of the three red dots, she’s in no real danger. “They’ll never catch me in the room, or in the halls. I’m much more agile than you think.” I’ll have to trust her on that.

Charlotte gets up and so do I. “I’m coming with you, just in case.”

“It’ll only make things harder,” she protests. But I don’t budge. I want to go with her. She’d already agreed that I can help her find the lab, and this may be related.

After I throw and secure the tarp over my invention, we tiptoe out into the corridor, careful to move quickly and quietly. I match Charlotte’s stealthy steps. She has a special way of placing her foot down to minimize sound. I copy her as we turn into another room, and I shut the door softly behind us. Charlotte leans against the wall next to the door. She fiddles with a tiny device on her ear that I never noticed before. Stolen from the gov? I mouth. She nods and smiles.

I guess it’s a hearing device, because as she listens, she furrows her eyebrows in concentration. I suppose it’s hard to listen behind two walls. I try not to make a sound, and I stand behind her, hands in my pockets and waiting.

After a little while, Charlotte’s arm shoots out behind her and grabs me. With an unceremonious yank, she brings me to the ground, and we crouch there. Charlotte motions for me to stay low. Overhead, out in the hallway, there’s the sound of a door slamming, and I hear two voices conversing. Charlotte shows me her holographic map. One red dot is preparing to take the secret elevator, and the two others are now in the hall, very close to our room.

“So, everything that we were doing was for nothing?” The voice is a woman’s. Young, taunting, and with a small accent that I’ve never heard before. “We were drilling the wrong way the whole time? Mr. Lancrux, if you say that the readings are accurate, and that we need to drill a different direction, I believe you. I believe you because you are always right. But that’s just the thing. If you’re right about this, I can’t imagine how hard and long it will be to drill all over again! We lost three men to tunnel accidents and I cannot risk anymore.”

“You’re right, Alice. But I have placed an order for a special mega-drill equipped with a tank of tunnel lining. As it drills, it will apply a thick coating of rubber-like material that will secure the tunnel and allow for human walking. The tunnels should be safe when we use that drill.”

“When will the drill arrive then, Mr. Lancrux?”

“It already has. Mr. Emios Ire is working on putting the parts together. Then he will head the drilling himself to make sure no more casualties occur.”

I can’t help it—I gasp at the mention of my dad’s name. The voices stop. “Did you hear something?” the woman asks.

My breath quickens, and I see Charlotte let off a soft sigh of irritation. She takes my hand and we move back into the shadows of the room, and she and I manage to squeeze ourselves in the tight space between a stack of boxes and the wall. We don’t make a sound, waiting for the people to push the door open. My head throbs from the excitement.

The door creaks open. I find a crack between the crates I’m pressed against and I peek out. Two people enter, with their footsteps loudly echoing in the dark room. They’re dressed neatly but not completely formally. The woman has dark curly hair, cut short at her neck, and the man named Lancrux has golden hair streaked with white. One of his eyes is a mechanical replacement (I can tell by the faint glow of the mechanisms in the pupil), and by the way his left arm looks, I’d say that he had a mechanical arm too. I’ve seen a few people with mechanical replacement parts before, and I knew that only those with incredible need for medical attention could receive a spare part. However, some of the wealthier people who were bored wanted custom parts. Eyes and ears were the bigger deals to the rich, because mechanical eyes and ears enhanced their senses. The best soldiers in the warfront would get mechanical arms and legs to improve battle performance, speed, and attack strength.

The only reason for this man to have an eye and an arm as replacements is that he not only has wealth and power, but he has had experience in the army and was a respected officer. Someone very high on the charts, and someone well-known within the government. In fact, now that I think of it, Mr. Lancrux appears to be my parents’ boss, the one that they always talk about.

“Was there a sound in here?” Lancrux mutters. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I thought I did, Mr. Lancrux.” The woman scans the room with a frown. “Would you like me to search the area? This floor should be unoccupied.”

“Don’t waste your time, Alice. I didn’t come here for tiresome searches. Come along, now.”

The woman hesitates before following the man out the door.

Both of them have watches similar to Charlotte’s. When they leave, I whisper to Charlotte, “They have those watches…can’t they see us here?”

“They can if they have the apps, which they probably do, but I don’t think they bothered yet. Let’s leave before we’re discovered for real.” She helps me up from the boxes.

Charlotte checks her map again and shows me that the two people are far from this room. We hurry out the door and down the hall. Charlotte presses the elevator button and we wait anxiously. Finally, when the doors open and we step into the tube, a clear glass elevator, I let go of the breath that I didn’t know I was holding.

As we speed upward, I ask Charlotte, “What did you hear them say when they were in the room?”

“Let’s go into my apartment. We shouldn’t talk on the elevator.”

I don’t need to ask her why. Her expression is carefully masked, but I know that she’s super cautious right now. I take in our surroundings on the elevator, and I see two tiny black dots buried into the sides of the elevator. This elevator is bugged.

When we stop at the first floor, people push and shove and stream into the empty elevator. Taking Charlotte’s hand, I pull her out of the way as a heavy man with a metal cart nearly rams into her.

“Thanks,” she gasps, shaking off the brief moment of shock. “Come on, let’s go to my apartment.”

After a couple minutes of pushing through crowds, we descend the wide circular staircase to the halls of apartments. Charlotte rummages through her pockets and digs out her key card, which she swipes impatiently across the scanner. She opens the door and we go inside.

I didn’t know what I’d expect to see upon entering Charlotte’s apartment. I guess I thought that, since she was originally from the government, and that she was good at stealing what she needed, the apartment would be nicer. But the standard bits of furniture are still here, the cheap, colorless furniture that came along with the apartment. Charlotte waves for me to sit down on a brown couch. It’s not too comfortable, but I sit back and take in the rest of the small living room. There’s a low-grade 3-D projector sitting high on a stool in against the wall directly in front of me. My family has this too. It costs a lot to run it, so normally we use the curve-screen television, even though I’m aware of how old that would seem to other people. In the corner of the living room is a desk with a computer on its shiny surface.

Charlotte comes out of her bedroom with a large emerald ring in her grip. First, she takes the large side of the emerald and places it against the side of her head. She’s transferring her microchip information onto the emerald, which must be a USB. Then, she presses the emerald flat onto the smooth surface of the projector. A holographic desktop appears before her, and she carefully moves folders and documents around in the air. Finally, she enlarges what she was looking for. The recording of what she’d heard on Super-Ear. Charlotte presses play on the projector after the recording has been transferred to the projector.

The voice, slightly crackly, fills the room with a hollow sound. I close my eyes and pay close attention.

The familiar voice of Mr. Lancrux comes first. “—although sometimes I wouldn’t think so.”

“Wouldn’t you? I thought the plan was obvious. The main problem is the time. This plan takes far too long. Isn’t there a better idea?” Alice, the woman.

“Nope, unless Emios here has something to say about it,” Mr. Lancrux replies. I stiffen.

“Actually, I do.” My father’s voice. “You know how the seismic scramblers are preventing us from getting to the lab? Well, I’ve received news about how to deal with this from the government. I can’t tell you about it, but I guarantee that this plan might work.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Alice protests. Her voice becomes sharp on the recording. I wince. “You’ve hired a crazy man, Mr. Lancrux.”

“I know which plan he’s talking about. But he’s right. We can’t talk about it here. And you, Alice, stop complaining. You aren’t a high enough rank to know the details yet. In fact, both of you don’t know all the details. But I know what plan Emios is referring to. We should have nothing to worry about.”

“Fine. Hey Emios, you’re leaving? I’d thought you would be coming with us.”

“I’ll come later, thanks. I have to get home now. It’s getting late.”

A pause. Then… “So, Mr. Lancrux, what were you saying earlier to Emios? Something about the current drilling progress?”

“Ah yes, that. We were drilling the wrong way. We have intel that the lab is not in that direction. And now, our readings are confirmed to be correct.”

“What?”

Here, Charlotte stops the recording. “You know the rest,” she says, glancing towards my direction as I open my eyes.

“They’re drilling to get to the lab.” It was more a statement than a question. “And even though the lab is protected by scramblers, they have a way of finding it anyway.”

“Yes.” Charlotte sighs and flops onto the couch next to me. “I don’t know the plan they’re gonna carry out, and it’s bothering me that I don’t know. Maybe we can find out,” she says, staring up at the ceiling. In the apartment upstairs, I can hear a baby crying, and footsteps across the room.

“What can we do about it?” I turn to her. “The government has so many people working on this, and my own father is working against me!”

Charlotte blinks slowly at me. “That’s it!” she exclaims. She leaps forward and knocks me over in her rush. She begins to pace the room. “Raven, if you can try to find out more from your dad, we can get a better lead. Are you a good hacker? Maybe you can take a look at his computer when you have the chance. And maybe when you can, you can listen to his voice texts. Or his phone calls, if he prefers that instead. And you can also get some information from your mom, if she knows about your dad and about the government’s plans in the business they work in…”

“Stop!” I jump up from the couch; my mind is spinning a torrent of thoughts and emotions at me. “I can’t spy on my own family!”

“Why not?” Charlotte looks genuinely puzzled. “If I were you, I would do it in a heartbeat.”

“It’s just wrong.” I shake my head. How could she understand? She said so herself that she never had a true family. She wouldn’t know of the bonds between family members. “My parents are everything to me. To be secretive to them, and to lie and eavesdrop and spy… I don’t think I can do that.”

I can feel Charlotte’s gaze sweeping over me like fire. “Well,” she huffs. “If saving the world isn’t important to you, I understand. You’d feel really great when the government finds your invention and tears it up, won’t you? Because by then, it will be certain that no one is allowed to bring back the ozone layer and save Earth, and no one will.” She snarls, “The government will have everything by then. I know how it felt to be one of their…possessions.” She practically spits the word out like venom. “Raven, do you want Earth to be destroyed? It’s our home, no matter what.” She looks away, thinking. “No matter what,” she echoes softly.

Well. Just like that, she’s persuaded me.

~~~~~

I try to enter the apartment quietly, but the door is too heavy. My entrance is dramatically announced by the loud click of the door. I cringe at the heavy thud. In the quiet of nighttime (the city has finally settled down), it sounds like a patrol of soldiers have fired their guns into the sky.

My sneaking ends up being completely unnecessary. When I walk into the living room of my apartment, the lights are on, and the TV is playing reruns of By Lamplight, an old historical soap opera from the 2500s. My mom and dad are on the couch together. Dad is half asleep on the arm of the couch, and he stares at the TV with a blank and tired look while his watch projects an email below him. Mom is biting her nails and watching the digital clock in the wall above the TV. The customized clock screen looks like a fish tank, and Mom’s eyes are following the tiny minnows darting around.

When she heard the door shut, Mom looks up and rushes towards me in a frenzy of motion. “Oh, Raven! You’re here! I’m so glad you’re safe! It’s so late, where were you?”

Dad jolts fully awake. “Raven’s finally home, huh?”

“Hey Mom, too tight.” She squeezes me one more time, and then we laugh. “Why are you so worried about me? I’m old enough to do what I want, Mom.”

“Well, it was getting so late, and the city has a lot more people now; I was afraid you’d get kidnapped or lost or something…”

“This city isn’t even that big.” I pat her shoulder, then inspect her face. “Oh wow, Mom, you have bags under your eyes. Go get some rest.”

She smiles at me through those tired eyes. “I’ll be fine, sweetheart.”

“The government is really pushing you two this time, huh?” I slowly manipulate the conversation. “Forget about me sleeping late. You two look like you don’t sleep at all!” I direct my next question towards Dad. “What’s the government making you guys do all the time anyway?”

Dad shrugs. “Even I don’t know everything about what we’re doing. All I know is that I work for them, and we get decent pay. Honey,” he says to Mom. “What was the price of that new shower platform you wanted? Or did you want one of those tub things…?”

Mom laughs and sits back down next to Dad. “It’s called a bathtub. You’d do better out there in the world if you were less ignorant,” she teases.

I head to my room. “I’m gonna try to sleep,” I call back to them. “Mom, Dad, good night.”

“Night, son.”

“See you tomorrow morning, Raven.”

But I don’t sleep. Not yet. I know my dad knows more than what he’s telling me, and I’m going to find out where he’s planning to go tonight.

It was obvious. He had an email open in front of him, and it stated that he was to have night shift today. If I can follow him, I could get onto something.

I text Charlotte what I know and lay back on my bed, resisting the urge to sleep and waiting for the sound of my mom sleeping and my dad leaving.

~~~~~

I don’t expect to wait long. My parents have been hiding things from me for a little while now, but I’d always assumed it was a small thing. I know better.

Mom’s reply, “I’ll be fine,” implies that she agreed to them not sleeping as much as they should. This means some nights, they have night shift. But I what I don’t anticipate is how sneaky they travel to their work place.

I hear their voices drift through a crack in my door.

“Is Raven asleep?”

“I think so. I’ll check, honey. You can get some rest. I’ll wake you when it’s time for your shift. I have to leave now.”

“Ok.”

Footsteps approach my door. A shadowed head pops out and looks at my supposedly sleeping figure on the bed. Then it slowly retreats and leaves the door slightly ajar.

“Bye, dear.”

“Bye.”

I don’t hear Dad’s footsteps until Mom has gone to their room. Then I slip out of bed, and just in time, I dart into the living room as Dad opens the apartment door and heads out.

My shoes are already on, so all that’s left is to follow him. I let the door shut so that he hears it shut. I hear the click as the door relocks itself. Then I wait and count one minute down. Sixty…thirty seconds…and then I open the door as quietly as I can manage and go outside.

Dad is walking briskly down the hallway lined with apartments. He’s adjusting his suit as he goes. I use Charlotte’s way of sneaking to tail him. He turns the corner. I pause and wait a few seconds before going after him.

The halls are so eerily quiet, it sends a chill up my spine. The warm air-conditioned environment makes me feel stuffy. Then Dad goes up a long set of stairs to the city floor. I have to wait until he gets to the very top before I deem it safe to start up the stairs behind him.

The people that normally crowd the city aren’t here. It’s just Dad and me. I fall behind some more as Dad goes down a walkway that I haven’t been down before. He keeps going. Then he goes down a hall that directs us lower, into the depths of Tylius.

~~~~~

At the end of our expedition, Dad scans a special key card in front of a fat silver door and it slides smoothly open. He strides inside, smiling confidently despite his weary looks.

I try to piggy-back on the entrance, but he almost sees me as I slip behind him. I let out a soft breath of relief when he walks through the door without noticing me. I slink behind him and wait behind a metal pillar as he goes down a dark hall with few lights on the dimpled ceiling. Another fat door opens automatically as he moves in front of it. This door isn’t locked, I can tell. Eagerly, I text Charlotte: I’ve gotten in. Want to call?

I have to wait a few seconds before a hologram of her face lights up from my watch. Before she can speak, I press a finger to my lips.

She nods, and I whisper, “Don’t talk. Not until I move.”

I creep forward and weave past the motion-censored door. I need a place to hide from anyone else who’s going to be entering the work place. I look up and see a wide platform over the automatic door. With great effort, I jump and pull myself up onto the platform above the door without letting my swinging legs get in front of the motion sensor. There’s a space between the walls there. A thin corridor opens up before me, and I walk inside, my senses alert for suspicious movement.

I’ve gotten access to what looks like a maintenance room of the workplace. The walls are covered in buttons, scanners, and devices. There’s a shelf with a few cleaning supplies, but mostly, this is the room where gravity and air conditioning of the rooms below me are controlled. My dad is in the labs and workrooms below this control room. I see a door in the wall on the right, and without warning, it bursts open.

“Yeah, I’ll get to that right away, as soon as possible.” A man carrying a mop and bucket says on his phone, pressed against his ear. “Email me the coordinates and I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.”

He sets his bucket and mop on the side of the room and sees me.

“Hey, kid, what are you doing here?” he exclaims.

In panic, I throw out my arm and pull the biggest lever I see.

With a roar, every electrical appliance connected to this room falters, and then turns off. The room is plunged into pitch black; I fall to my knees and cover my ears as the roar gradually fades away. The hum of the electric lights, suddenly absent, now makes it seem too quiet. Then I hear voices. So many voices, and so loud! I stumble to my feet and turn off my watch, which still emits a faint light because Charlotte’s hologram is still there. I know that right now, the most important thing is that I can’t be seen.

The maintenance crew man crashes into the shelves, sending bottles skidding over the floor. It’s all I can do to keep myself from slipping on the rolling bottles. I’d best try to leave no fingerprints as I go.

I make my way to the door by memory. I open it up and gently bend down to feel the ground in front. These are stairs. I feel my way down the steps in total darkness and my panic rises. If I bump into a person here, will they notice that I’m not supposed to be here? Behind me in the room, I can hear the man rushing around blindly, trying to reach the switch, but constantly tripping, falling, and losing his sense of direction in the mess. It sounds chaotic in these labs. Somewhere farther away, I hear a soft explosion. An energy-based lab must have become unbalanced when the power shut down.

I walk with my hands slightly forward, inching along the wall as quickly as I can. When I hear footsteps and yelling coming my way, I press myself flat against the wall, careful not to let my fingers touch the wall. I feel the rush of air past me as a pair of people dash past me.

“Where’s that maintenance guy? Why’d the power go out?” I hear someone complain down the hall.

I continue and almost stumble as my feet find a step down. I go down these stairs too, unsure of what I’m doing but knowing that I had to keep moving. I pass several separate halls that branch off from this winding staircase, but I keep going down after hearing many jumbled voices coming from lab rooms and offices down these halls.

At the bottom of the steps, I see a room with a faint blue glow. I crouch and listen intently, and once I’m sure nobody is here, I sneak in. The lab I’ve walked into is very large. There’s a glass column filled with strange blue glowing spheres, shifting and swirling around in the tank, pulsing with energetic beams. I squint to get a better look at what’s around me. There’s a piece of paper covered in dark ink. Only important, secretive things were written over dark ink, because it would be hard to read. I grab a light pen and the blackened paper and turn away from the room.

“Hey, there’s someone in here!”

There’s a second open door on the other side of the lab. One man is standing there, pointing at me and yelling for his comrades. I don’t hesitate. I sprint through the door I came from as shouts well up back in the room behind me.

Overwhelmed by the darkness, I trip over the stairs and land heavily on my palms. A chipped piece of tile slices into the skin of my left hand. I draw in a breath and clench my fists. I have to get out of here, now.

I turn the corner from the stairs and go down a hallway that’s completely quiet. I keep running, not paying attention that the ground was sloping down. Suddenly my feet give way under me and I go plummeting into the open trapdoor that I hadn’t seen.

The fall, thankfully, wasn’t too long. I brace myself for impact a little too late. I land on my ankle and it’s all I can do to keep myself from screaming. Then I roll forward and come to a stop.

Gently rubbing my ankle, I try to see what’s around me. It’s still too dark down here to see anything. My hands still grip the black paper and the light pen. The place I’ve fallen into is damp and musty and quiet. The trapdoor upstairs is led to by a short ladder. I climb up the ladder, doing my best to ignore the throbbing pain in my ankle, and close the trapdoor, in case anyone were to follow me.

I turn on the light pen as I descend. The floor is smooth and metal, dented in some places, and there are pools of stagnant water all over, possibly because of a leaky cooling system. I tread carefully. The light from the pen doesn’t make all that much light. Then I notice a weight in my pocket that must have been there before, but I never paid attention to it. I reach inside and pull out a small square of smooth metal. A memory comes back to me: I was with Neil in the workshop, and he had teased me when I showed him this finished product. My foldable lamp.

When I press the button, the lamp unfolds itself on its own, quickly. I press another button and the panel of light on the top glows. I fold the lamp so that the panel faces outward and I hold the other side. It’s similar to a flat flashlight in this form.

I can see much more now. The room I’ve fallen into is large. Messy stacks of crates line the walls. Behind me, I hear a buzzing sound, and I turn to see that the cracks in the trapdoor are glowing faintly. Someone had finally turned on the power back there, but this room, it seems, either has the lights switched off normally or it doesn’t have lights at all. Why wouldn’t the lights be on, if it had any? I turn my flashlight up to the ceiling and let the light sweep across. There are no lights up there, so this room stays dark all the time. My light flickers, and I make a mental note to myself to remember to check the circuits once I get out of here.

I continue exploring the room. After walking in one direction for too long, I turn to walk the other way. All around me are crates, more and more crates, each one looking larger and bulkier than the other. Finally, I reach a wall, with a computer attached to it. I flip down the keyboard (not holographic keyboard, because once again, this place doesn’t like light) and I try to open the computer.

Success. The computer lights up dimly, and there’s a single bar where a password is required. I look around for any clues to the password. Surely nobody is stupid enough to—

My luck turns around. On a small note taped to the side of the computer, I can make out the word: anomaly8. I type this into the password bar and wait, fingers crossed for good luck.

To my surprise, the computer unlocks. “Well, that was easy,” I mutter under my breath. A scrolling screen pulls up, and I move swiftly through the different apps. All the information on this computer is now at my touch.

One document folder looks very suspicious. I click on it and look at the documents inside.

“Lunar rising coming on the 9th of December 2702.” I shake my head in disbelief. It was so soon, and the invention wouldn’t be ready by then!

Then I read about something else. “A private RSA conference has approved of Project Tylius. Project Tylius uses Tylius as a launch base and sets off light-sensitive explosives in space to capture dark energy.”

No wonder this place is dark and has no lights. The crates are just as light-sensitive as the precious weapons they hold. I think of the trapdoor. It’s a hatch. This room isn’t just a room. It’s a vehicle, a shuttle. I think of how the walls slope upward smoothly without a single door. There are no lights because the room isn’t attached to the power source that the other rooms in this part are attached to. When the day comes, this room will move out and into the atmosphere.

I need to tell Charlotte all of this. But right as I pull out my watch, something tackles me from behind.

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