There were for work areas in alclass="underline" the Biology Laboratory, the Metallurgy Laboratory, a Computer Science Lab, and a Linguistics Research Office. Identification badges were in short supply, but I did stumble across several things of interest. In the Metallurgy Lab, I found samples of a strange material resembling aluminium foil. Maybe fifty pieces of varying size were lying around the work area. I picked up one of them. It felt cold to the touch had had an odd cloth-like feel to it. I folded it and set it back on the counter. Within seconds, it unfolded into its original position with no visible crease.
On one part of the counter, a Bunsen burner was surrounded by swatches of the material. I pulled the book of matches from my pocket and held a flame up to one of the pieces. It had no effect whatsoever.
In another part of the lab, I found a box full of objects that looked like miniature I beams, about a quarter inch thick and ranging in length from half an inch to more than four feet. I couldn’t tell what they were made of, but I guessed it was some kind of plastic. I picked up one of the longer pieces. It was absolutely weightless. Closing my eyes, I couldn’t even tell that there was something in my hand. I figured material that light must be extremely fragile, so I tried to snap it in half. I couldn’t bend it even a millimetre.
In the Biology Lab, I found yet another strange material. It was black, shiny, and almost as thin as tin foil. Since it could have been a cousin to Bakelite, the material wouldn’t have appeared to be anything out of the ordinary, if it hadn’t had an unusual density and been staggeringly strong. I also recognised additional samples of the miniature I beams floating in various solutions. In every case, the object hadn’t decomposed in any way.
Looking around the Linguistics Research Office, I recalled my conversation with Malloy. I was probably standing in the very place where he did his work on the cryptic alien symbols. After some searching, I found several boxes of the I-beam structures. These, however, had symbols on them. The symbols were very small, less than a fingernail wide, and a shiny purple colour. There were many different characters, primarily consisting of geomet-ric shapes, leaf-like figures, and variations on circles. Other characters could have been Chinese in origin, to my highly untrained eye. The writing was beautiful and mesmerising. I suddenly understood Malloy’s lifelong obsession with finding the meanings behind the symbols.
Throughout my search, I felt increasingly that I was not alone. It wasn’t so much that someone was watching me as that there was another presence close by. I heard nothing, saw nothing, and couldn’t pin down any apparent reason for the feeling. I hadn’t seen any other corpses, though I tightened up every time I opened a door or turned a corner.
Only one accessible area was left to comb on Level Two: the Computer Science Lab. My first impression of the area was that it looked like a typical customer-service office, with dozens of cubicles, each containing a standard-looking, if old-fashioned, workstation. Further exploration confirmed that no identification badges were lying around.
Toward the back of the room, I saw a door cracked open a couple of inches. I walked over and tried to push it open farther, but it wouldn’t budge. Putting my eye to the opening, I was shocked by what I saw. It looked as if a battle had erupted on the other side of the door. The door connected to the Computer Science Lab with a much larger area that had blast holes everywhere. It looked as though a fire had broken out, charring sections of the walls. I couldn’t get an accurate count of the dead bodies, but there were at least two dozen. Seeing all the devastation, I decided that something must have been dislodged in the battle that prevented the door from swinging open.
I put my shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge. Then I put my eye back to the crack, and to my excitement, caught sight of an identification badge.
A corpse lay about five feet beyond the door, his back turned toward me, a plastic-encased badge clipped to the belt of his trousers. All I had to do was reach out and grab it. Of course, the body was out of reach, and the door wouldn’t open enough for me to get my arm in anyway. I leaned against the door, focused on the badge and, for several minutes, tried to figure out a solution. I considered giving up on it, but I’d already gone through the entire level and come up empty. Jury-rigging was in order.
I went to the elevator and returned to Level One. In the recreation area, I picked up a pool cue and removed a dart from the dartboard. Now that I had the two pieces of my salvaging device, I just needed to find something to hold them together. I remembered seeing the familiar silver sheen of a roll of duct tape in one of the storage rooms. God, I loved duct tape. Very few problems couldn’t be solved with duct tape and/or a coat hanger.
With the duct tape, I attached the dart firmly to the end of the pool cue. Returning to the door at the back of the Computer Science Lab, I soon pulled the identification badge through the narrow opening. Flushed with my success, I hurried back to the Restricted Area and waved the badge in front of the sensor by the door to the Records Room. With a barely audible click, the door opened.
I stepped into the room, and my expectations fell. It was much larger than I’d hoped it would be. Rows and rows of file cabinets stared back at me dauntingly. Time to smoke. I’d been hunting feverishly for several hours and suddenly realised that I needed a rest. A chair sat by a desk near the door. I collapsed into it and lit my cigarette.
After my second smoke, I decided to start looking. For three and a half hours, I went through drawers, files, and boxes, hoping to randomly stumble across a reference to the power cell and where I could find it. Then I caught a lucky break. In one drawer of a file cabinet, I caught sight of a label marked simply #186. inside the file were several photographs of the power cell. The slide I’d seen was a drawing, so I had no reference to determine how large it was. For all I knew, it could have been as big as a punchbag or as small as a fuse. In the photograph, several objects were visible in the background. The power cell looked to be no more than eighteen inches in height and as big around as a coffee mug. The file also held a number of papers, including a description submitted by whoever had originally catalogued the object. Several addenda were seemingly contributed by various researchers who had performed tests on the power cell. The last document was a receipt, indicating that the item had been placed into storage. Area G, Level 3.
Leaving everything behind but the receipt, I hurried to the elevator. I inserted the blue card one more time and pressed the button for Level Three. A warning light appeared on the LCD: Access Denied. Oh, great. The red and green cards brought the same result. It still wouldn’t let me go down. I stuck the cards back into my pocket and considered what options I had, if any. Research of Level Two hadn’t turned up any alternative routes. It was the elevator or nothing.
I thought it over. Whatever had killed the people here had either originated on Level Three or in the room behind the Computer Science Lab. I was more inclined to think that it had come from below. Malloy had said that almost everyone had been killed before the military sealed off the area. So far, I’d only seen twenty-five or thirty corpses. The base must have had several hundred people working here at the time. Where were the other bodies? They had sh to be on Level Three.
That had to be the reason why the elevator was denying me access. The first step in containment would have been to seal off the source. The security office! That’s where they would put a lock on access to Level Three.