Page 52 of The Fall

The high-traffic carpet had mostly rotted away, exposing warped cellulose flooring. “Is this safe?” Lusa took a cautious step. The floor sagged wetly, but didn’t collapse.

“There are metal beams underneath.” Kerr stood at the edge of a concrete stairwell. “I made it across just fine.”

“You’re at least 20 kilos lighter than me.” Lusa stepped cautiously.

“Not there.” Kerr pointed at a spot just ahead of Lusa’s foot. “The beam is to the right.”

Feet hovering above spots on the floor, waiting for Kerr’s instructions, Lusa did not appear pleased. But the spots Kerr pointed out held.

“I can see more with my Opti.” Kerr tapped the side of her temple. She didn’t dare divulge just how much she had seen last night, but she would remember it for as long as she lived. Kerr hopped down the stairs before Lusa could see her turning red.

Smelling of wet earth, age and lack of maintenance had bowed the concrete walls in slightly and weeping cracks had started to form. In one corner stood a small generator, along with a rusted metal breaker box and an access hatch.

“That’s the way into the tunnels I was talking about.” Kerr pointed to the hatch. “And that,” Kerr pointed to an immense circular door on the other side of the room, “is the vault.”

“It’s closed,” Lusa said, unhelpfully.

Kerr worried at her lip. “It could have been shut by anyone. I haven’t been here in years.” Kerr wanted to be hopeful. If Chalice and Pinga were on the other side of the vault, they would starve, if they didn’t kill each other first.

“Isn’t there a way to release the door from the inside?” Lusa asked.

“No.” Kerr knocked twice on the vault door, and waited. Relieved at the lack of an answer, Kerr continued. “Shutting the vault and trapping whoever was trying to rob them inside was a security feature.”

“What happened if an employee got trapped inside?”

Kerr laughed. Lusa frowned. “SD didn’t have a single human employee working here. The only thing stored here was gold, old paper and posh watches. Emptied out before they sealed off The Glacier.”

Lusa reddened, embarrassed. “What about the big tower downtown?”

“All humans. Corpo shite like how much Chem you could pump into your workers before they became a liability” Kerr leaned against the door. Corporations always got her riled. “Fierce cunts, the lot of ‘em, right? Pure human creativity needed to come up with the sort of cruelty they did. AI didn’t have it.”

Lusa looked disappointed. “I saw some ads playing in Model 2’s lobby. Was Tyton ever like that?”

“What did you see?” Kerr relaxed, sliding down the slab of dull grey tungsten.

“Clean buildings. Cars speeding down roads. People having fun in the streets.” The wistfulness in Lusa’s voice was hard to ignore. She’d also inadvertently confirmed that the Adlets were no longer in Tyton. No wonder no-one could find them.

Kerr cleared her throat, guessing. “Don’t you have ads in your city?”

Lusa shook her head, but didn’t say more. For once, she looked jolted. She must have realised that she’d let a secret slip.

Kerr decided not to press it. “If people could speed down empty roads or party in the streets without fear of getting shot, they wouldn’t buy products that gave them the idea that it was possible, yeah?”

“That makes sense,” Lusa muttered. Kerr felt a growing sadness at her disillusionment. She shouldn’t care what Lusa thought of Tyton – it was an objectively terrible place. She would be leaving, hopefully with Pinga and without killing them all to go somewhere better. There was so much she wanted to know about her and so little time left.

But Lusa had moved on. “What about this?” She pointed to the generator next to the access hatch.

“It powers the door.” Kerr rapped her knuckles twice against the vault once more to check. Still no answer. “When we first investigated this place as a potential safehouse, we found that the latches were loaded with some kind of mechanism inside the door itself. Our Optis can’t penetrate it, no matter what frequency we use. If we close it, it’ll lock automatically, no power needed.”

“But you need power to unlock it?” Lusa guessed.

“Yes, but there’s more,” Kerr continued. “We got the generator going, yeah? But it requires an encryption key from Model 2 to disengage the lock. It’s why we never set up here.”

“So, either Pinga and Chalice locked themselves in there hiding from the Styx, or someone else did years ago?”

Head bobbing, Kerr knew that Chalice would only have dragged Pinga in there if they were being chased and had no other options. Her mind spun with scenarios that would have led them here before Lusa’s voice interrupted.

“Can I ask you something?”