Sarah Burks's Arc

Chapter 6 of 13

Sarah descended the subway stairs first, her flashlight beam cutting through the thick dust. The fake platform stretched forty feet into darkness, its tile work still pristine beneath decades of grime. She moved slowly, scanning every surface for signs of the structure's real purpose. The leader pointed to a makeshift perch built near the far wall—rusted stairs leading up to a platform with stacked crates arranged for sitting. Someone had positioned it to watch both the entrance behind them and the tunnel ahead. Sarah climbed the metal stairs and found the view gave clear sight lines in every direction. Whoever lived here wanted early warning if something came up from below or down from above. She touched the crate and felt recent wear patterns—this hadn't been abandoned for decades. Marvin's voice echoed from the platform edge. "Got something here." Sarah descended and joined him beside a concrete water barrel fitted with crude welded pipes. Green algae coated the interior, still wet despite the dry air. Someone had rigged a filtration system using vault-grade components—she recognized the pipe threading from her studies. The leader knelt and examined the welds. "Professional work. Military training, maybe pre-war engineering knowledge." Sarah's chest tightened. Marvin's grandfather had helped build Vault 17. This could be his refuge. She found the metal detector wedged behind the barrel, its cracked screen still showing faint readings. Sarah turned it over and saw handwritten coordinates scratched into the casing—three sets of numbers matching the radiation hotspots she'd mapped beneath the factory floor. The occupant hadn't just known about sublevel three. They'd been monitoring it, measuring its energy output, watching whatever lived below. The leader took the detector from her hands and met her eyes. "Your analyzer data proved something was alive down there. This proves someone spent years studying it before we even knew to look." Sarah nodded, understanding shifting inside her. They weren't the first team to investigate Vault 17's secret. They were following in the footsteps of someone who'd made it their life's work—and then vanished.