It had been a warm day on the surface, but here, the temperature had plummeted and the humidity had risen. His skin felt slightly cold and clammy.
When he had lost track of how far down they might be, the tunnel finally leveled out and enlarged. It was wide enough that he could stand up. Senta-eh stood as well, but had to stoop to keep from bashing her head.
They crept ahead silently. The tunnel turned to the right and when they went around the bend, their torches illuminated a door.
Chapter ElevenThe Discovery
It was not a black, shimmering door like Alex had seen in his basement, or the one that Douglas Winterborne had been trying to reach when he was torn apart by dire wolves. It was an industrial steel door that looked as out of place in Kragdon-ah as a jet airplane.
“Is that one of your doors?”
Alex considered how to answer that question. “It is not a door that will take me back to my time. But, it is a door that looks like it is from my time, if that makes sense.”
Senta-eh firmly placed two fingers against her forehead.
Alex stepped forward and turned a knob. A stainless-steel knob that was a complete anachronism in this time.
It was not locked, but the door did not want to budge. Alex pushed his torch at the door and examined the casing. It looked to be solid steel.
“Stand back a bit,” he said to Senta-eh, then delivered a strong front-kick to the door, just like every hero in every cop show he had watched as a child.
The door pushed open a few inches with a screaming squeal that reverberated in their ears and down their spine. There was nothing but inky blackness beyond.
Alex kicked it again and it opened another half foot, then stopped, wedged tight.
Alex’s heart beat faster. It was so loud in his ears, he wondered if Senta-eh could hear it.
He pushed his torch forward into the room, followed by his right shoulder and head.
It was a control room.
A control room for what, Alex could not immediately guess.
The flames of his torch bounced off flat-screen monitors and he saw keyboards, mice, and what appeared to be CPUs. There were coffee cups scattered around and a few dishes. It looked as if someone had been here just a few minutes before, and would return soon.
Alex was not a superstitious man, but he felt an unnerving presence in the room.
Alex glanced at Senta-eh to see if being close to this much actual stama was impacting her.
Her expression was blank. Everything in the room was so far beyond her comprehension, her frame of reference, it was meaningless.
The room was not large. There was one long counter with the computer equipment and a few landline phones. Off to the left, Alex saw another counter. A coffeepot, thick with dirt and dust, sat next to what Alex was sure had once been a microwave oven.
This place must have been sealed up tight to stay this pristine. Other than Douglas Winterborne and his tunnel-diggers, we must have been the only humans to step foot here in tens of thousands of years.
Off to the right, Alex saw a single window that opened into another room. The glass was so dirty he couldn’t see through it, but there was another door beside it. This door swung into the room easily.
When Alex saw what was there, he slammed the door shut with a certain superstitious dread of his own.
“A nuclear missile,” he mumbled, not realizing he had switched back to English.
“What?” Senta-eh asked.
Alex shook his head to clear it. He tried to bring what little he had ever known about these missiles back into his mind.
I think the delivery system would cease to be operational after just a few years. Certainly after a few decades or centuries. But what about the payload? I was a soldier, not a weapons tech. This is above my pay grade. I have no idea what the half-life of that stuff is. For that matter, I have no idea how many years into the future I’ve gone.
Alex had lived in Kragdon-ah for so long that he had slowly, piece by piece, forgotten about things from the twenty-first century. Everything except Amy, who was never far from his mind.
He turned to Senta-eh who stood like a statue in the middle of the room. Alex could see that nothing here made any sense to her.
He touched her shoulder to bring her focus back on him. “I think this was what Doug-ak was doing here. I think when he stepped through the door, he knew this was here. He thought that whatever was here would make him powerful.”
“He was not powerful. He was weak.”
“He was. And now he’s dead and that’s a very good thing, I think. Let’s go see if his door is still here.”
They walked to the door that led to the tunnel. Alex took one last look over his shoulder at the only surviving remnant he had seen of his own time. Of course, it was a weapon.
He stepped through and closed the door behind him.
The climb up was not difficult, and Alex felt glad to be away from what was hidden far below. Before long, they came to the spot where the tunnel had branched off, turned right, and continued on.
Their torches were not built to last long. Alex had thought they would be through the tunnel in just a few minutes. Their detour had delayed them, and they burned down until they went out completely. Alex was once again in the tunnel in total darkness. This time, though, he was not alone, and knowing Senta-eh was there made a difference.
They crawled along just a few more minutes and Alex saw the light that streamed down from the hole at
