“This place is really kind of amazing,” Harper said later that afternoon. True to my word, I was giving her a more in-depth tour of the entire facility.
“Yeah, it’s pretty wild, isn’t it?”
“What did they do here?” she asked.
JJ had shown her around the main building, so she’d seen the command center, her computer lab, the living quarters, common area, big kitchen, little kitchen, commercial pantries, freezers and walk-in refrigerators, empty offices, and arsenal. I had just shown her the motor pool and mechanics garage, the power generation complex, the well head and water cistern, the central heating building which piped heat into all the buildings, the building supply and maintenance sheds, and now we were walking into the laboratory building through the attached greenhouse.
“We don’t know. Brad couldn’t get a scrape of information on that, but we’ve found a lot of odd clues. For instance, this greenhouse is all set up for hydroponics. Some soil-based beds as well, so we should, according to my grandparents, be able to grow food all winter long. Point is, what the hell were they growing here that needed a greenhouse this big and this complex?”
I opened the door into the interior hallway. “These all were labs of some type. It would be hard to tell, but because of the proximity to the greenhouse, we think they were biology labs, while the floor overhead seems like more workshop space than lab. But they’re all stripped clean.”
“Biology and technology?” she questioned.
“Seems like it. Now check this out,” I said, opening a janitor’s door.
“Not that impressive, Gurung,” she said in a tone that questioned my intelligence.
“Really? You don’t think so?” I asked, reaching over to a red fire alarm switch and lifting the cover on it to reveal a concealed keypad. Quickly punching four digits into the panel, I stepped back a bit so she could fully appreciate the metal shelving unit and the wall behind it that was now swinging open to reveal a tiny room.
“Secret rooms?” she asked as I led her inside.
“Close. Secret elevator,” I said, punching the down button.
The floor dropped and she yelped a little. “A little warning next time would be appreciated, Gurung. That thing isn’t safe,” she said, nodding at the concrete side of the shaft sliding by rapidly where the open door had been a moment ago.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I asked as we descended.
“How did you find this? Not like the place came with a manual, right?”
“No, it didn’t. The twins found it. They were hiding from a work detail, didn’t like cleaning the leftover nutrient muck out of the hydroponics tanks, according to Mom. I was still in the city at the time. Anyway, they hid in here and one of them, Gabby I think, was messing with the fire alarm box because, you know, teenager, and found that it lifted up. Immediately they realized a keypad was hella unusual so they told Martin and JJ. In fact, it was JJ who figured out the code.”
“Really? Brains and brawn and looks? Where the hell is his wife?”
“No wife, not even a girlfriend at the moment.”
“At the moment? He’s a player, isn’t he?”
“I used to think so, but the reality was he never had to play at all. Women just threw themselves at him. He picked a few up but threw them all back. Movie star looks and celebrity status and the family wealth that came from the show. He learned about gold diggers quick.”
“Men must do the same with Astrid?” she asked carefully.
“Males have always done the same with Astrid. From middle school on. Grown men hit on her when she was the same age as the twins are now. Which is why I get a little wiggy when my sisters are out in public… men are dogs.”
“So you have to guard your sisters and your girlfriend,” she said.
“Ah, sisters yeah, girlfriend, not so much. She’s been handling admirers most of her life. She’s adept at it and if they don’t back off, she’s got serious skills. Don’t tell her I said this, but she shoots almost as well as me.”
“Nobody shoots as well as you, you freak. But that’s cool—about her handling herself. Being out in the big wide world, I got a little taste of the whole male thing myself. If you can believe it.”
“Of course I believe it. You’re pretty as hell. You should take JJ up on self-defense lessons; he’s got black belts in karate and jiu-jitsu.”
“Maybe I’ll do just that,” she said. The elevator came to a stop, the concrete wall suddenly opening into a corridor. LED lights blinked on, one after another, illuminating the stark concrete walls, floor and ceiling in a harsh white light that my mother had called clinical.
I led her out of the elevator and showed her the rooms branching out on either side of the central hallway.
“Some look almost like cells?” she said.
“And some are clearly more labs. Hard to tell, as they took everything except some papers,” I said, picking up a pile of unlabeled diagrams from the floor.
“Okay, this looks like plans for drones? At least like artist renderings of possible future drones,” she said.
“That’s what we thought.”
We toured the rest of the underground facility, but it had been thoroughly sterilized other than the sheaf of drawings that had somehow been left behind.
“Okay, I’m creeped out enough. Can we go back up?”
“Yup. Let’s go.”
“I’m going to hang on to these, if that’s okay. No reason to leave them down here, right?” she asked, shaking the sheaf of papers.
“Nope, none at all.”