Darkness greeted us. It was a staircase going down to the basement, where there was the narrowest slant of light. Cam pulled his lantern from his gear bag. His pet curled around his shoulders and gave a little protesting hiss. I'm not so excited to go down there, either.
It looked like this area was designed as a sort of panic room or safe haven. My eyes luckily needed no help from Cam's lantern to see a Bureau badge on a discarded vest lying at the bottom of the staircase. What a greeting. Dreadful anticipation seized me as the scent of death tripled in this small space. It was stuffy with a dry heat, making me think of the wildlings again.
There were seven bodies. They were all human, all Bureau, and all dead and dried out like the wildlings. I sighed and went with Cam to examine them. They were at least a couple of weeks old. I spotted two guns on one of them, but the others looked more like researchers with sparse tactical equipment or uniforms. They all wore Bureau insignias somewhere on their dirty clothing.
My stomach curled with worry. It was an emotion I could usually push away on a mission, but this was different. What if Lyra's parents were here?
"Keep an eye out for the name Sloane," I told Cam. It took him a second to piece together what I meant by that, and he nodded slowly. We spread out and checked their dog tags and every pocket inside the uniforms. Roots curled at the edges of this building, breaking through the stone floor. I glared at the invading plants. They were like infectious particles wherever we went, completely invading the area they attacked.
"Nothing," Cam said. Good. I hadn't found anything either. From the looks of it, these sorry souls were other Bureau people in the wrong place at the wrong time. Cam settled in to memorize their identifying information for our next report, since Bryce had put him in charge of typing the reports for the Bureau. I let him do that while I did a final sweep of the room. There were a few containers of food rations, still uneaten. I grabbed them for Cam and his pet. I would also need to feed eventually, but for now, I was all right. If the wildlings had starved from a lack of dark energy in their necessary food system, what might that mean for the other creatures in the Leftovers—what did that monster eat?
As I worked that out, a new sensation rose inside me. Someone was nearby, maybe multiple people. Their energies were mixed, but not unusual, since they were in flux with their darkness and light levels. Lyra and her friends always read very light for me, but these—two, there were definitely two—were more balanced. More in line with what I expected from the average human.
"We've got company," I told him. "They're not especially dark, but we should be wary. If they are survivors, then they might be very disoriented." I felt out the energy signatures. There was a certain amount of darkness, but not enough to make me hungry. I took that as a good sign that we might have run across some typical humans, maybe even Black Rock survivors.
Cam and I booked it back up the staircase. Out in the street, I caught the scent of a human and the trail of darkness. A floral aroma permeated the air, but it was foreign and artificial.
"Is that perfume?" Cam muttered. I frowned and sniffed. Even he could smell the odd scent, but he was right. It was perfume. Odd, but it was possible that the Bureau workers had brought personal effects with them, especially if they weren't soldiers.
As we searched, Cam looked down at his scanner. There were no new signatures popping up, which supported the human theory.
"You know, it’s possible that people were just in the area when the meld happened," he mused. "Like campers, or teenagers having a bonfire." I had no idea what a bonfire was, but it sounded like something human adolescents would partake in.
The energy signatures darted away at the end of the street. A flash of color caught my eye as the figure rushed behind a building.
"They're hiding," I told him. "I'm going to tell them to come out." In the light, my skin still had faint shadows dancing beneath the surface, but maybe it wasn't enough to be a dead giveaway for a vampire. If they were Bureau survivors, they might be skeptical of my presence, since technically not even Cam was a member of the Bureau. We had been hired by them, but they might not believe that the Bureau would have contracted a private company to find them. Things had changed greatly since the meld.
We came to an intersection in the crumbling town. "I know you're here," I shouted. "We're here to help you."
Cam nodded, scanning everywhere for a sign of them. I caught his eye and subtly inclined my head in the direction of a taller building on our left. The signatures were concentrated there.
"We're assisting the Bureau," Cam yelled. "We can take you to safety or medical care if you’re injured." It was technically true. How had these survivors made it when the other Bureau workers died down in the basement, though?
The scent of artificial flowers hit me.
"Are you sure?" a high-pitched voice cried worriedly. Something
