Zelda Verada's Arc

Chapter 5 of 13

The team had a shape and a start date. What it lacked was power. The medical lab up top ran on failing batteries, and the descent needed steady current for lights and tools. Zelda spread her action notebook on the bench and tapped the empty line beside power. Sinclair walked in before she could write anything. He wore a smile she'd learned to read as good news, and behind him two Rangers wheeled in a heavy portable generator. "Fifteen thousand watts, gal," Sinclair said. He knocked the frame with his knuckles. "Runs on three fuels. Whatever we scrounge, it burns. I traded two salvage maps for it. That solves the lights." He grounded the win plainly, no flourish. "Power's the one thing you can't fake your way past." Logan arrived while the Rangers set the generator. He carried the weathered report board he'd pulled from level three, its pages pinned tight and stamped with warnings. He set it against the rack and pointed one short paw at the top page. "Dr. Mingus. Prewar biologist." His voice stayed flat. "He wrote up levels five and six. Fungus down there secretes acid. Eats organic matter. Stays dormant without oxygen." He let that sit. "You open those levels, you feed it air. Then it wakes." Zelda read the board twice. The acid mutant on level three had come from below. Now she knew what bred it. She thought of Logan's shoulder burn, of the sealed room, of three months clearing rooms that would only get worse the deeper they went. "So we don't clear the bottom," she said. "We seal it." "Permanent seal on the lower levels," Logan agreed. "Weld the door past level four. Cut the air. Nothing wakes if nothing breathes." He tapped the report. "The G.E.C.K.'s down there too, but it's tied to a dead reactor. Chasing it kills people." Zelda closed the notebook. The arc had always pointed at the deepest secrets. She let that go and kept what mattered. "We take the top four levels. Hospital and trade station up here. We seal the rot below and never reopen it." She looked at Sinclair. "That's the plan. It's smaller. It's alive." Mary Long stepped in then, glasses catching the new work light, her tan folder tucked against her scrubs. She had run the top since the first week, holding medicine while the rest of them dug. "Then I run the whole medical center," she said. "Head nurse. Not just the top lab." She flipped her folder open and marked it. "I can staff it if you keep it small." "Head nurse," Zelda said. "Yours." Sinclair looked around the garage, at the generator humming, the sealed plan, the warning board. "Cleaner deal," he said. "I can sell a hospital. Nobody buys a tomb." The team agreed. The lower levels would be sealed for good. The field hospital would rise from the four levels they could hold.