Logan Harrison's Arc

Chapter 6 of 9

The garage door hung in shot-up panels, but inside, the base had shape now. Logan spread his gear on the steel desk. Two suits, spare batteries, a coil of rope, and a small gray box with an OLED screen that read power loads in bright green numbers. He checked the energy meter twice. Tomorrow they would push down to level two, to the control room he'd marked on the vault plans. Kira Dallas leaned over the same map, counting crates against her supply list. Mary Long packed the medical kit in the corner. For once, the panic stayed quiet. "We move at first light," Logan said. "Level two, straight to the control room. If that panel still holds power, this meter tells me before we touch anything." He'd read a coupling wrong once and paid two fingers for it. He wouldn't guess again. Zelda came down the stairs from the hospital, wiping her hands. She didn't like the plan. He could see it before she opened her mouth. "You're walking into a room nobody's seen," she said. "No map of level two. No count of what's down there. You cleared level one slow for a reason. Then you skip a floor?" "The cores need power routed from that control room," Logan said. "I can't pull them cold." "I'm not saying don't go. I'm saying don't go blind." She looked at Kira. "You'd verify a shipment before you signed it." Kira didn't look up. "Hah. I don't sign for a crate I haven't opened." She set her pencil down. "She's right, Logan. You send people into a dark room, that's how you lose them." A voice cut in from the doorway. "Then don't send people first." Sinclair Feldman stepped through the broken panel, his radio pack riding high on his back. He was the tech who'd traded Logan the vault for a fixed keycard, and he never came empty-handed. He carried a dented sphere under one arm, patched in gray and tan camo, one big glass eye catching the lamplight. An old Enclave eyebot, rebuilt. "Send this." Logan set the meter down. "It flies?" "It flies, and it sees in the dark." Sinclair set the bot on the desk. Its eye swiveled toward Logan. "Live video back to my screen. We map level two tonight. You walk in tomorrow knowing every door, every drop, every body." Zelda's shoulders eased. "That's the count I wanted." They opened the inner door a crack. The eyebot hummed and slid into the black stairwell. On Sinclair's screen, gray walls scrolled past. A corridor. A collapsed shelf. Two feral shapes, still, curled in a far corner. Then the control room itself, its main panel dark but intact. Logan studied the feed. "Two ferals. Panel's whole." He tapped the meter. "We route the guards to hold that corridor first. Then I read the panel." Kira marked the map. "Now I'll sign." Tomorrow they went down. This time with eyes open.