Wendy's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Wendy had eleven minutes to find a door that didn't exist on any map. Three weeks ago her brother slipped into the deep sector of the orbital station and never came back. She had followed him to this station six months after her own reassignment, and he had followed her up before that with no posting of his own. Now the deep sector was sealed to everyone. The next lockdown would seal it harder. She pressed her hand to a blank wall on the lower deck and found nothing but cold metal. The station intercom counted down the lockdown in a flat voice. Ten minutes. Wendy walked the corridor twice. Every hatch she found was welded shut or missing its panel. Her fingers shook. She had been searching for two days and had learned only one thing: the deep sector entrance was not where the public maps said. A man rounded the corner, dragging a heavy tool bag. Gray hair, thick glasses, a tool belt heavy with wrenches. Wendy had seen him before, always alone, always headed down. He was the old maintenance chief, the one who had kept the station running for thirty-one years. He did not slow for her. "You can't be down here," he said. "Lockdown's coming." "My brother's inside the deep sector," Wendy said. "I can't find the way in." Frank Dawson stopped. He looked at her for a long moment. "Nobody finds it. It's not on the maps. I built half of it myself." "Then you know the entrance." "I do." He checked the countdown on the wall. Eight minutes. "I'm going down to fix the cooling lines. Management says it can't be done. They're wrong." He hitched the bag higher. "Kids don't come back out of there." "Neither will you if the lines fail," Wendy said. "Take me. I'll help carry." Frank studied her Adidas shoes, her shaking hands. He grunted. "You'll slow me down." Then he turned and walked to a section of wall that looked like all the others. He knelt, pried a floor grate loose, and reached into the gap. Something clicked. A seam split open in the wall, low and narrow, a hatch no map showed. "That's it?" Wendy stared at the black opening. "That's it." Frank swung the tool bag through first. "Once we're in, the lockdown seals behind us. No coming back until it lifts. You understand that?" The intercom said five minutes. Wendy thought of her brother, alone in there for three weeks because she had come to this station at all. She dropped to her knees and climbed through. The hatch hissed shut behind them. The lock engaged with a deep, final thud. She was inside the deep sector now. So was Frank. The way out was sealed, and her brother was somewhere in the dark ahead.