Page 37 of A.I.AM.

They called Hiro without using the radios. Ace struck a hanging pipe three times, waited, then twice. The sound traveled through the building. Pigsty watched him.

“We had a signal for that?”

“We do now.”

“ARGUS heard it.”

“Yes. It doesn’t know whether I called Hiro or warned him away.” Hiro arrived two minutes later accompanied by Tanner. He examined the paint line, then the base of the wall.

“Expansion joint continues under it,” Hiro said. “If someone added a room behind this wall, the slab would interrupt.” Tanner looked toward the roof.

“Unless the room is suspended.” Pigsty stared upward. Steel trusses crossed the darkness thirty feet above them. Between two beams, a maintenance catwalk ended short of the wall.

“That,” he said, “is an expensive way to shorten a catwalk. But the bigger question would be, how did Elias do all of this from a wheelchair and with one arm?” No one had an answer for that. Not yet.

They reached it by an old cage ladder. Pigsty climbed first. At the top, the catwalk vibrated beneath his weight but did not shift. Ace followed, then Hiro. Tanner remained below, watching their shadows. The walkway ended at a blank sheet-metal panel. No handle, hinge, or fastener showed on its face. Pigsty knocked. Hollow. Ace smiled.

“Hidden room.”

“Hidden space,” Hiro said. “Don’t promote it yet.”

The panel lifted when they pressed both lower corners at once. Behind it lay a narrow plenum crowded with ducts wrapped in silver insulation. Warm air moved over their faces. Pigsty shone a hand lamp along the cavity.

“Enough room for a man of average size. It would fit a wheelchair as well.”

“Enough room for a duct technician,” Hiro replied. Ace squeezed through. Dust coated every surface except a rectangular patch on the nearest support.

“Something was mounted here,” said Ace. Hiro inspected the four clean points around it.

“Not mounted. Rested. There are no fastener marks,” he said frowning at the wall. Pigsty pushed in after them.

“Chair-sized?” he asked.

“Battery-sized,” smirked Ace.

“Crank-sized.” Tanner’s voice rose from below.

“What does the dust say?” Ace angled the lamp. The clean patch held a finer outline, almost invisible: a narrow rectangle with one rounded end.

“Something was here,” he called.

“Recently?” Hiro rubbed the surface.

“No way to tell. Airflow has probably redistributed the dust.” Pigsty pointed deeper into the plenum.

“There’s another panel.”

They crawled twenty feet through heat and fiberglass to reach it. The second panel opened into the top of a decommissioned grain chute. The chute descended through the floor into blackness. Ace lowered the lamp. Its beam ended before the chute did. Pigsty’s grin returned.

“Now may I call it a hidden room?” Code and Hayes found the first contradiction in the blueprints.

The facility plans lay in a steel drawer in the old supervisor’s office, printed on linen sheets, and amended across four decades. Code aligned the original seed warehouse drawing with the bunker conversion overlay. The exterior dimensions agreed. The interior dimensions did not.

“Seven feet, four inches,” Hayes said.

“Across which axis?” asked.

“Both.” Code measured again.