little sick those first few months.
He heard a groan from the direction of Alec’s cot, and the thoughts floated away, pushed to the back of his mind to torment him later. But that feeling of terror he’d experienced in those last moments in the subtrans tunnel wouldn’t leave, lingering like the smoke from an extinguished fire.
“Oh … crap,” Alec said.
Mark popped up onto his elbow, looking in the direction of his friend. “What?”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep. Fine soldier I am. And I left the damn workpad on. We can forget using that thing again.”
“Meh, the battery was probably almost dead anyway,” Mark said. Though in truth, he’d have given anything for five more minutes of the device’s glow right then.
Alec groaned and Mark heard the sounds of the cot creaking as the older man got to his feet.
“We need to go find this guy’s coworkers. He said they were meeting farther down in the bunker. So we need to find our way to some stairs,” the man said.
“What do we do about him?” Mark pointed to Anton, forgetting for a second that Alec couldn’t see him in the darkness.
“Let him sleep out his sorrows. Come on.”
Mark took a moment to get his bearings, then got up and felt his way to the end of the cot toward the middle aisle of the room.
“How long do you think we slept?” he asked.
“No idea,” Alec answered. “Maybe two hours?”
They spent the next few minutes slowly making their way through the room and out into the hallway. The light above the door still sputtered a bit, but barely enough to see by. They eventually found the stairwell Alec had been hoping for. Even the dim sight of it, mostly lines and edges of shadow descending into blackness, brought back to Mark the memory of the flood and their mad clamber up the stairs of the skyscraper. It’d been so close that day. If he’d known all that would come after, would he still have fought so hard to survive?
Yes, he told himself. Yes, he would’ve. And he was going to find Trina and get out of hot water again. He almost laughed at his own joke.
“Let’s get on with it,” Alec whispered as he started down the steps.
Mark followed him, determined to stop dwelling on the past. He had to focus on the future or he’d never reach it.
The flight of stairs only descended three levels, though there was no exit until they reached the final one. They pushed through the door and found themselves in another hallway. They’d finally come upon the section of the bunker that used the raving generators above: a line of lights along the ceiling illuminated the passage. Unlike the hallway they’d come from, this one curved.
Mark shot a glance at Alec and they started down the hall. There were doors lining the walls, but Alec suggested that they explore the length of the corridor before they tried each one. They slipped along, as quietly as possible, and it wasn’t long before it became clear that the hallway was a giant crescent.
They’d traversed about half of what they could see of its length when Mark heard voices, then saw their source. Up ahead, on the left, there was a set of double doors, one propped all the way open. The sounds were coming from whatever was happening in that room. A gathering of some sort, men and women talking over each other so that Mark couldn’t make out a single word being said. Anton’s meeting, his coworkers.
Alec slowed as he approached the room, and carefully stepped forward until he was right next to it, his back pressed against the closed door. He turned to look at Mark, shrugged as if to say it’s now or never, then craned his neck toward the opening and leaned in for a peek. Mark held his breath, remembering all too well that they had no weapons.
Alec pulled his head back and sidled a couple feet toward Mark. “It’s an auditorium. It’s pretty big, seats about two hundred, maybe. They’re all down at the bottom watching some guy on the stage.”
“How many are there?” Mark whispered.
“At least forty. Maybe fifty. No sign of our friends, as far as I can tell. They all seem to be arguing about something, but I can’t tell what they’re saying.”
“So what do we do?” Mark asked. “Keep going? This hall can’t go on much longer.”
“If we get down on our hands and knees we can