Unawakened (8 page)

Knowing what I was looking for helped, but it still took me over an hour to locate the door. I sighed and whistled for Rob and Colby. The two dae hurried over.

“This is it?” Rob demanded.

My macaroni and cheese roommate bounced on the ground at my feet and muttered something too soft to hear. Despite my inability to distinguish which of its two words it grumbled, its discontent and doubt came through loud and clear. I laughed, prodding Colby with my booted toe. “Move it, noodle brain. I’ll show you.”

The lawn hadn’t been mowed in years, and it took me several minutes to find the right spots. The unchecked growth forced me to jump up and down to activate the sensors beneath my feet. The click warned me to move, and I hopped out of the way before the gears whirred into motion. There was a grind and a ripping tear as the mechanism tore through the grass and dirt and popped open.

“And you doubted me,” I murmured, dusting invisible dirt off my hands. I’d get dirty soon enough opening the hatch leading to the door below. I grabbed hold of the wheel and gave a yank, grunting at the effort it took to get the wheel spinning. I turned it three full revolutions one way, half a revolution back, and three more turns forward before it clicked. I lifted up, grunting from the effort. The hiss of air warned me to hold my breath.

Rob spluttered, backing away and waving his hand in front of his face. “That’s vile. It smells like a corpse down there.”

Dry and dusty I expected, but like a corpse? I tensed, shivering. “No light. If you use any lights, the internal locks will activate, and we won’t be able to access the vault until tomorrow.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Once we go in, unless we leave tonight, we stay in there until tomorrow night. Do you have a problem with that?”

“We’ll be missed.”

“Last time I was in here, there was a connection to the government systems. I’m sure you can send a message if it’s a problem.”

“You could have warned me earlier!”

I snorted. “That’s no fun, Rob. You wanted to come. Don’t be a wuss now.”

Rob spat curses at me, which I answered with laughter. Maybe the vault smelled of corpses, but it wasn’t any worse than Baltimore’s river. There were some advantages to being a fringe rat, and I descended into the darkness, leaving Rob and Colby to decide for themselves if they came down with me.

They did.

I found the body by tripping over it. I crashed to the floor, cracking my chin on the concrete hard enough stars burst in my vision. The shock of pain lancing from head to toe froze me on the floor. Rob cursed somewhere behind me, grabbing hold of my elbow to haul me upright.

“No lights,” I hissed through clenched teeth. My entire face throbbed from the impact with the ground. I lifted my hand to touch my chin, and the warm wetness of blood covered my fingers. “Ouch.”

“Well, whoever they were, they’ve been dead a long time. Nothing left but bones.”

“I haven’t been here in three or four years. Maybe a bit longer.”

“Is that enough time for a body to become a skeleton?” Rob made a thoughtful sound. “I guess the answer is yes.”

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. I figured that out about the time I tripped over it.”
 

Rob helped me to my feet, stepping over the body. “You’re sure we can’t use any lights in here?”

“Positive.”

“I don’t suppose you’re going to explain why there’s a corpse down here?”

I had a good guess, and I tried not to think about it too much. If I failed to get us through the next door, we’d share the intruder’s fate. “I have a theory.”

“Are you going to share this theory, Miss Daegberht?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“Are you going to chicken out if I tell you?”

“It is entirely possible,” the dae hissed at me, giving my arm a shake.

“I got into the vault just fine the first time. I can get in again. Okay, so fine. The top level door locks once you try to unlock the next door. If you can’t crack the code, you can’t move on and you can’t get out.” I lifted my hands in a gesture of surrender. “The door only opens at night, too.”

“Just how long were you in this vault again?”

“A month.”

“And you didn’t starve to death?”

I laughed. “Of course not. Unlike this poor guy,
I
wasn’t stuck. Anyway, you’ll see. The vault has everything in it. You could probably live down here for decades without a problem.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Mommy,” my roommate agreed in a grumble.

“If you’re worried, you can wait up top.”

“And what if you can’t open the vault? I can open it again stepping where you did, right?”

Maybe I couldn’t see Rob in the darkness, but I felt his glare on me. I rubbed my aching chin and opened my mouth as far as I could, wincing at the pain in my jaw. “Who knows. Maybe? Maybe not. Never tried it.”

“You’re not filling me with confidence, Alexa.”

“Hey, Rob?”

“What?”

“Just think about it this way. If we die down here, at least we’ll have good company, right?”

Rob sighed. “You’re terrible.”

I laughed, dusted myself off, and headed down the corridor leading to the next door. Behind me, I heard the hatch clang closed. The grind of gears echoed, and when the tunnel fell silent, Rob spat curses.

“Don’t worry, Rob.”

“And why shouldn’t I be worried? You’re a magnet for trouble, and there’s already one corpse down here. I’d rather not add ours to the collection.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” I chided. “You have me. Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.”

Rob cursed me, the corpse, the vault, and himself while I laughed.

The vault door was as I remembered, a wall of braille text prone to shifting beneath my fingers. The first and last time I had been to the vault, I had brought a braille tablet with me at Kenneth’s recommendation, but he had claimed it back long ago, leaving my memory the only thing standing between us and a permanent stay in the vault’s corridor.

At my side, I heard Rob suck in a breath. “This is writing.”

“Braille,” I informed him. “Words for those who can’t see.”

“This is a dead language.”

In a way, I supposed he was right. Very few people needed braille; eyes could be replaced, and the blind could be made to see with the marvels of modern science and medicine. Like so much within the vault itself, it was protected by a language lost to so many people.

“A fitting guardian for the vault,” I replied, running my fingers over the door’s surface. The most disconcerting part of trying to read with my fingers was the alien sensation of translating dots, lines, and empty spaces into words.

“Kenneth Smith sent you down here to retrieve something for him?” The anger in Rob’s voice made me pause in my work, and I sighed.

“This was one of the safer jobs. I thought you had that figured out by now.”

“He could have gotten you killed.”

“Surprise, surprise. He didn’t, so stop your bellyaching and let me concentrate. I don’t have a braille tablet with me this time, so I have to actually work at this. It’s been a few years.”

“You can really get through this door?”

“If you shut up long enough for me to work, I can,” I hissed at him.

“Mommy,” Colby whined.

I was getting better at reading my unusual roommate’s tone; its whining tone formed a question, and while I wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to know, I had a few suspicions. All of them involved its rather potent digestive system.

“Let’s not destroy the door unless we really, really need to Colby,” I replied. “Shush, both of you.”

They obeyed.

The trick to opening the door wasn’t complicated; I had to find the question hidden in the braille on the door. Once I translated it, I had to find the corresponding braille and tap in the phrase. The question changed every couple of minutes, putting a time delay on the door.

Whoever had designed the door had decided the measures were enough and allowed as many attempts to input the correct sequence during the period of time the question was active.

The door had millions of potential combinations. Without a hacking interface, someone could spend an entire lifetime inserting random combinations and never enter the vault. There was only one constant about the door, and that was where the question appeared.

I crouched in front of the door, trailing my fingers along the bottommost line of braille. I felt Rob join me, warm against my side. He stroked his hand down the length of my arm until he reached the door.

“So, how does this work?”

“The door asks a question. We press in the correct answer in braille and it lets us in.”

“It’s that simple?”

“The question changes every few minutes.”

“Not so simple, then.” Rob hummed before drawing in a deep breath and sighing. “We really can’t use light down here?”

“There are none so blind as those who will not see,” I quoted although I had no idea who had originally coined the phrase.

It fit the lives of those who lived under the heel of the government and its elite far too well. Over the years, I hadn’t thought too hard about the vault and its creator, but as I worked to decipher the vault’s door, I wondered who they had been and why they had built it.

Had they known what would come, or had they responded to the fall of the old ways and the rise of the caste system?

I doubted I would ever know.

My limited knowledge of braille slowed my progress, as did the vast number of words and phrases etched over the door. With each failed attempt, my frustration grew. When I felt the text shift beneath my fingers, I returned to the question, read it the best I could, and hunted for the answer on the vast wall.

With each word I read successfully, my memories of braille returned. I didn’t know every word or number, but I knew enough. All I had to do was wait for a question with a simple answer, then we would be inside. The rush of adrenaline filled me each time the patterns on the door shifted.

Rob and Colby waited in silence, although I heard the shuffle of Rob’s feet on the floor. The door changed patterns under my fingers, and I slid my hands over the door and crouched so I could read the question.

The phrase puzzled me. While it had the cadence of literature, it didn’t quite match the hints and riddles the door usually provided. “‘Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud?’”

Rob chuckled. “Bible verse.”

“Come again?”

“It’s a verse from the Bible.”

I sat back on my heels, huffing. “Well, shit. That’s unhelpful.”

“Why?”

“Usually it wants the next sentences of the book, the title of the book, or where it’s found. There’s sometimes several answers to the question in the door. Whoever created the vault wanted people to get in—if they have knowledge.”

“‘It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs.’ That’s the next sentence,” Rob said.

“I hadn’t you pegged as the religious type, Rob.”

There was a long moment of silence before the dae sighed and replied, “I’m not.”

“That’s only one sentence. There needs to be two. The clue had two sentences,” I informed him, rising so I could search the door for either a reference to the bible or the corresponding words. At least the phrase was easy enough I could pick out the words with my limited knowledge of braille.