Machinations Read online

  It lasts seconds only, but it’s enough to dissolve the nerves of nearly everyone in the mess hall. When a second one hits, shaking trays off of tables, all but the heartiest McKinley residents join a mass exodus from the hall. Whatever the protocol for this particular situation is, I would guess it was along the lines of hunker down and wait it out. After all, what else is there to do when you’re this many kilometers under the earth?

  “Could be an earthquake,” Rankin offers helpfully.

  Hanna signs something I’m not familiar with, particularly against a background of swerving flashlight beams and creeping shadows.

  “Not likely,” her husband responds with a shake of his head. “None of the bunker busters have ever penetrated this deep.”

  “Instead of sitting around hypothesizing like old men,” I say, rising and taking one last bit of yogurt, “why don’t we go find out what’s going on ourselves? Command’s only one level up.”

  Rankin thinks about it. “We’ll have to take the stairs,” he points out.

  “I’m not afraid of a little exercise. Samuel? Hanna?”

  I’d better not, she signs. I remember she’s been kept out of the field since the accident, away from any and all fighting. In a combat situation, the loss of even a single sense can prove fatally detrimental, and Hanna was never much of a scrapper to begin with. I nod, understanding. Even if these are just tremors, best not to risk putting her in a position where she can get hurt.

  “What about you, Samuel?”

  “Hanna, is there still a library on this level?” he asks.

  “I hope so, or I’m out of a job,” she replies with a wry smile.

  Samuel returns the smile, then looks at me. “There are a few books I’ve been meaning to check out,” he explains. “I doubt my expertise will come in handy on this particular expedition, anyway.”

  “Suit yourself,” I say, a little disappointed he isn’t coming along. But Samuel can’t be my crutch forever. Plus, with his arm still in a sling, he’s not going to be much use in a fight. Not that I’m expecting one, but you never know.

  “Have fun storming the castle,” Hanna says with a grin, but I notice she whispers something else into Rankin’s ear, to which he nods and kisses her.

  I look at Samuel who smiles briefly. “Meet you later?” he suggests, and I agree to meet up with him back at his quarters afterward, provided we’re not under attack.

  “Well, looks like we’ve got a few flights to catch,” Rankin says, clearly meaning flights of stairs. I shake my head at the pun, unable to repress a smile. He hands me an additional flashlight to carry. “Still nothing? Wow, tough crowd tonight.”

  —

  The hallways are crammed with people, personnel spreading out in all directions like aftershocks, with the epicenter the mess hall on this level. Being trapped amidst such a mass of moving bodies, especially underground, where there are no windows to climb out of, no back doors to run through, produces a nauseating feeling of being buried alive.

  As my geography of the base is a touch rusty, I let Rankin lead the way, our combined beams lighting the vinyl floor ahead of us as we proceed to the stairwell.

  While equally busy in terms of foot traffic, almost all of it is flowing down to the lower levels, where it’s safer. This clears the way for us to head up, climbing the equivalent of a four-story building to reach Command. The layout of the base is ingenious, really, constructed with every precaution in mind. But size and safety don’t necessarily allow for convenience, and it’s not a light trek between levels.

  Somewhere between the third and fourth flight of stairs, there’s another quake, much more powerful than its predecessors. I anchor myself to one of the railings and end up looking over the side. The well in the center seems to go on forever, disappearing into the dark bowels of the earth.

  “Out of curiosity, how far would you say that goes?” I ask, my voice echoing a long distance down. Goes, goes, goes. The sound dissipates into silence and empty space.

  “I try not to think about it,” Rankin says, staring ahead.

  “Afraid of heights?”

  “It’s not the heights I’m afraid of. It’s the sudden splat at the end, after the falling.”

  “Point taken,” I agree, a sudden wave of vertigo lurching through me.

  We keep moving, gripping the handrails as we go. A couple more quakes rock the stairwell, growing in magnitude as we get closer to the command level. Once we reach the door, Rankin palms the scanner for access, which makes me wonder whether my prints and DNA still work. Given the council’s distrust, I wouldn’t be surprised to find they’d revoked my security clearance entirely. It’s what I would do in their position.

  The lights on this level are on, but they have that bluish, artificial tint of floodlights. They buzz quietly, producing just enough electricity to illuminate the dark. I flick off my flashlight, but keep it in hand just in case. If nothing else, it’ll make a decent cudgel.

  Halfway to the war room, we run into Camus, who is hastily giving orders to personnel rushing past. For an instant, his eyes light up, and his lips begin to curve into a smile. He looks genuinely pleased to see me, but then it’s like he remembers I’m not his Rhona, not the real one, anyway, and his features harden back into stone. My heart, having risen for a single, glorious moment, now crashes into my stomach.

  I take a small, calming breath as Rankin and I fall in step alongside Camus. He doesn’t slow his pace any to accommodate us.

  “Lieutenant,” he says, acknowledging Rankin curtly. Apparently I merit neither a title nor a greeting.

  “Commander,” Rankin replies. “What’s the situation?”

  “We’re not sure yet. The machines have been doing strafing runs all day, but that was some miles north from here. It’s not clear whether they had a target or were simply testing new weaponry. They’ve since moved, as you have no doubt noticed. The mountain’s as good a location as any to test bunker busters. In all likelihood, they have no idea we’re here.”

  “Then why all the fuss?” I ask.

  “Because they’re too bloody close,” he says, teeth clenched around the words. For once, I sense I’m not the source of his frustration, and that’s something of a relief. Even if it does mean impending trouble with the machines.

  “Is there anything that can be done, sir?” Rankin asks.

  He stops, deliberating in the span of three seconds. “I need a man to lead a team down the southwest evacuation corridor. Reports indicate there may be a breach. The sensors have always been sensitive in that passage, but the last thing we need are machines infiltrating our exit routes.”

  “Yes, sir. Better safe than sorry.”

  “I can go with him,” I offer.

  “No,” Camus says sharply. “You will return to your quarters and stay there.”

  “And miss out on all the action?” I snort. “Hardly. It’s like you don’t know me at all, Camus.”

  He shoots a glance down the hallway before looking back at me. “I don’t have time to argue with you about this. But if you insist on defying my orders, at least have sense enough to stay out of the way.” His attention shifts to Rankin. “Lieutenant, you have your orders. See to it.”

  Rankin falls away down a separate corridor. I continue on with Camus—which is no easy task, since he has a couple of inches on me, and a mean, relentless stride to go with it.

  “You’re more worried than you’re letting on,” I say. “What else is going on that you’re not saying?”

  To my surprise, he actually opens up. I think he wants to tell someone, and since I’m technically a nobody now, I make the best candidate. It just confirms my theory about how excruciating the burden of leadership must have been for him over the past six months. He’s desperate to talk. “The base’s infrastructure has suffered some fatigue over the years. Nothing too serious, but this bombardment is putting unnecessary stress on some of the foundation. There’s a very real possibility that parts of the level could co
llapse.” He glances uneasily at the ceiling.

  “So, what are we doing about it?”

  “I have men identifying the major faults, but”—he stops as we part for a group of soldiers to pass between us—“but at this point there’s very little we can do.”

  “Shouldn’t we be evacuating the level then?”

  Another posse of men in their outdated fatigues pass by, forcing us to squeeze together momentarily against the wall. Camus gives no indication he’s even noticed the physical contact, apart from straightening his trench coat afterward. “Those nonessential personnel we can spare have already been sent to the military level,” he goes on to explain. “By all calculations, the lower levels should be able to sustain any fracturing that occurs above them. If, God forbid, the machines realize what they’ve stumbled onto, we’ll still be ready for them on this front.”

  For the first time, I see Camus’s walls not as a barrier, but as a serious force to be reckoned with. Whatever’s happened in the past six months, he has converted his introverted nature into a strength, becoming exactly what McKinley needs. Smart. Capable. Strong. I’m proud, but also a little sad. It’s selfish, but a small part of me had hoped he would still need me. “Sounds like you have all the bases covered,” I say.

  “Someone has to,” he answers grimly. “Now, I think it would be best if you—”

  A sound like cracking ice cuts him off midsentence. The lights blink on and off as the walls convulse, the ceiling heaving beneath some extraordinary weight. Plaster sprinkles down. I mean to move, but Camus’s reaction time is faster. He presses me to the wall a moment before it collapses completely, burying us.

  Chapter 9

  At first, I confuse the darkness with being unconsciousness as my mind emerges groggily from the trauma. I’m pretty sure I’m not dead, which is good news except for the fact I can’t seem to move. Something has me pinned—something warm and breathing. The heartbeat I thought was my own belongs instead to this other body.

  “Camus,” I say, coughing from the dust. “Camus?”

  There’s no response.

  I feel for his face, accidentally poking him in the eye. He groans. I think it might be the most beautiful sound in the whole world.

  “Camus, can you move?”

  His muscles tense against me as he tries. I can practically hear him grinding his teeth with the effort. “Not much,” he answers, pained. “Something has my legs trapped. They may be broken. I don’t know. Are you all right?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Hard to tell with all the adrenaline, but yeah, I think I’m okay.”

  Since I can’t see, I let my other senses take up the slack—specifically touch. My hands make a preliminary search of our surroundings, and find twisted metal and flaking chunks of sheetrock. I begin forming a picture in my mind’s eye. To my right—his left—there’s what feels like a giant support beam lying beside us. Above, there’s another one, angled against the wall. Together, I think they must have created a pocket, which explains why we weren’t immediately crushed. But all of this is conjecture; I can’t know for sure. And even if I’m right, there’s very little separating us from a literal mountain of rock if the beams give out.

  My breath starts to come a little faster. “We have to get out of here.”

  “Agreed,” Camus says. “I trust you have a plan to go with that statement?”

  “Not any particularly good ones. But I thought I should give you fair warning before I started poking around for an exit.”

  He actually laughs a little at this, although it quickly dissolves into coughing. He’s in more pain than he’s admitting. “Awfully considerate of you,” he remarks dryly.

  I tentatively test the strength of the pieces of debris closest to me. Some chip off or break away, but most don’t budge from what little pressure I apply. With more pressure, I might be able to punch a hole through, but there’s no guarantee that would get us anywhere, and the risk of a secondary collapse is entirely too high.

  “Careful,” Camus cautions. “You could trigger…”

  “I know,” I interrupt sharply, my mind already cycling through the grim possibilities, squeezing the calm right out of me as if I were a tube of toothpaste. “Believe me. I know.”

  An unhinged note in my voice must give me away, because Camus advises me to be calm. “Someone will find us,” he reassures me, and there’s such gentleness to his tone that my heart aches.

  As I’m deliberating on whether or not to chance pulling at more debris, I think I hear the muffled conversation of what could be a rescue crew nearby.

  “Do you hear—?” I begin to say when Camus shushes me.

  We listen, and those are unmistakably human voices. Before we can even begin calling for help, though, the sound starts to fade, ebbing into silence again. We yell anyway, for all the good it does us. The pocket traps our voices. No one responds.

  “They don’t know we’re here,” I realize and say aloud. Panic returns to gnaw on my nerves, making it difficult to concentrate. Trapped, I keep thinking, running into the word at the end of every train of thought like it’s a solid, brick wall. Trapped trapped trapped trapped.

  God, I’m getting really sick of tight, confined spaces.

  “Then we ought to change that,” Camus says. As he stretches his arm past me, the fabric of his coat brushes against my cheek, but it all ends in a hiss of pain. “I can’t reach. Can you break through? We need to open a hole, so they can hear.”

  “Hole. Right. Let me try.”

  I scrape and claw at the fragments of metal, rock, and other potentially hazardous materials that form the walls of our cave. I’m making headway when the shaking starts again. For a moment, I worry I’ve pulled at the wrong something and this whole place is going to come crashing down around our ears, and it’ll all be my fault. But then I realize it’s just the machines continuing their damn testing. It’s no more comforting, as I remember Camus’s warning. One wrong move and we’re dead. No pressure.

  Before I can resume, something sparks and stings me. The tremors unearthed some electrical wiring, now faulty from all the upheaval.

  “Damn it!” I curse, withdrawing my hand two seconds too late. The exposed wire bites my skin, giving me a small but memorable shock.

  “Careful,” Camus snaps. “Could you at least try not getting yourself killed? Again?”

  “What would you care?” I reply, not thinking, just hurting and afraid.

  “Do you really think I’m that heartless?”

  “Yes!” I shout from a place of frustration, then, “No! I don’t know.”

  He falls silent, although I sincerely doubt it’s for lack of something to say. Camus has always been better at holding his tongue and temper in check.

  “Let’s just focus on getting out of here,” I say in a barely comprehensible mumble.

  I work in silence for the better part of the next ten minutes. Camus assists where he can, usually without needing to be asked, which I appreciate even more because it doesn’t require me to talk to him. I don’t trust anything I would say at this point.

  Piece by careful piece, I dismantle part of the wall like a life-or-death game of Jenga, until there’s finally room enough for me to squeeze through into the next section. From this angle, it’s impossible to tell what lies beyond the dark hole I’ve fashioned into my escape hatch. I get only occasional glimpses from the sparking wires, and even then, all I can make out is more ceiling debris and crushed rock. Neither are encouraging signs. For all I know, the collapse could extend the length of the level, and this is a dangerous exercise in futility. But I have to try.

  The last obstacle left to me is Camus. “I think I can make it out now,” I say to him. “Can you support yourself for a second?”

  He pushes up with his arms, as if performing a push-up, and holds it there. I can’t imagine the pain he must be in, particularly with the lower half of his body still pinned, but he doesn’t complain or make any mention of it.

  In
stead, through gritted teeth, he gets out the word “Go.”

  I wriggle out from beneath him, immediately missing the security of his body. The sudden loss of his weight throws my own vulnerability into sharp relief. For a moment, I’m back near Anchorage, my pulse hammering in my ears, death drawing near like the passing shadow of an animal in a forest. I concentrate on slowing my breathing. It’s not like this would be my first time, should the worst happen. Knowledge is power, and I already know what to expect. A little pain, a little discomfort—then nothing. Dying once is an ordeal. Dying a second time is mostly inconvenient.

  “Okay,” I say once I’m clear of him, getting stuck halfway through the hole. I briefly feel around the space beyond and find something smooth and cylindrical partially concealed by rubble. My flashlight! I must have dropped it when the ceiling came down. But my victory is short-lived when I switch it on and the light peters out.

  “What was that?” Camus asks.

  “Flashlight,” I answer. “But I think it’s broken.”

  “Just our luck,” I hear him say, quickly followed by, “Wait. Hand it to me.”

  Even though it’s a tight space and difficult to maneuver in, I manage to pass the flashlight back to him. He readjusts the lens, gives it a good swat, and it flickers back to life. At once I’m alarmed by the bright red cuts and yellow-and-black bruises on Camus’s dusty face; he’s in worse shape than I thought, having taken the brunt of the collapse. For me.

  When he tries to hand the flashlight back, I reject it. “You keep it.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says firmly, forcing my palm to close around it. I relish the feeling of his hand around mine. “You’ll need it to see by if you can get us out of here.”

  “You’ll be left in the dark.”

  “It won’t be the first time.” Somehow, I know he’s referring to the past six months. Six months he must’ve spent in the black pit of his grief—a grief I’m only skimming the surface of, through his rejection. A tiny hammer of guilt clangs at my heart. I thought I had it bad, but my grief is a pale echo of what Camus has endured these many months, carrying the utter certainty of knowing the person you love, the person you would’ve done anything for, who you promised to protect, is gone forever. At least I’m buoyed by hope. He didn’t even have that much to hold on to. No wonder he drowned.