Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 3 of 8

The raiders were gone. Sergeant's team had hit them clean during a patrol gap, and now the ruined garage belonged to Sarah's crew. She stepped through the broken doors and swept her light across the scarred metal. The place still smelled of raider camp. But it was theirs now, and that meant she could finally search for the way down to the medical labs. A sealed door blocked one wall. Logan crouched at its panel, the Atomic Cats tech who read machines by what was broken in them. He had guided the Rangers scouts through these ruins for weeks, quiet unless the work earned words. He pried a cover loose and studied the wires. "Lock's mechanical," he said. "Raiders never cracked it. Lucky them." His two-fingered hand worked a tool into the seam. Metal groaned. The door slid back. Sarah expected a hallway to sublevel three. Instead her light found shelves. Rows of sealed food, stacked crates, and a tall glass cabinet against the far wall. Not the labs. A storeroom. She stared at the crates of sealed rations, more food than the whole team had rationed in a month. Then her light hit the cabinet. Behind the glass sat small metal containers on every shelf, each labeled in faded print. She stepped closer and read one. Preserved tissue samples. Her stomach tightened. She keyed her radio. "Zelda, come back. We cleared the raiders and opened a side room." "Say what you found," Zelda answered. Flat, direct, the way she said everything. "Food storage. Sealed rations, crates of them. Enough to feed the guard station a long time." Sarah paused at the cabinet. "And a preservation unit. Tissue samples behind glass. Prewar." The radio went quiet a beat. When Zelda spoke, her sentences stretched, the way they did when medical tech was on the line. "Rations keep my staff fed without spending favors I don't have. That's real. The samples matter more. If the cooling still holds, that's viable prewar biology. My hospital could use it, if it's clean." A shorter beat. "Is the seal intact?" Sarah leaned to the cabinet's edge. A thin frost lined the door. But one hinge hung wrong, cracked by the same blast that had scarred the garage. Cold air leaked from the gap. "Seal's broken," she said. "Cooling's failing. If those samples are worth anything, they won't be for long." "Then they're not stored. They're dying," Zelda said. "Get Mary to me. Now." Sarah looked at the crates and the failing glass. The food was a clear win. The samples were a clock already running. She had wanted the labs below. Instead she'd found a prize that would rot before she reached them. She keyed the radio again and called for the tech to bring the medic. The way down would have to wait. Something up here was already slipping away.