Chapter 295

Anna surfaced from the paralysis of immersion and barely absorbed the information Rachel was pouring out. But her nerves were still fixed on the CellGuard Research Laboratory grant records she hadn’t finished reading.

Turning over Rachel’s words—she’d found periodicals from 1992 and 2012 that carried blueprints for the Deep Drainage Tunnel—Anna asked:

“Are they detailed blueprints?”

“Just look for yourself first.”

Rachel handed Anna two volumes and sat down beside her. What Rachel had brought were issues of a biannual, report-like quarterly titled Urban Infrastructure. They were published in March 1992 and June 2012.

Aimed at administrators and field specialists, they must have had almost no readers. Time had only yellowed the paper a touch; both books were clean, showing no trace of wear. Anna opened to the pages Rachel had flagged. Twenty years apart—1992 and 2012—both issues carried special features on the Deep Drainage Tunnel.

“Start by comparing the two drawings.”

Each feature included an overview diagram of the drainage tunnel. It showed the tunnel stretching a total of 11 km. On the page Rachel had opened, the drawing covered the 3 km segment that ran beneath the center of Baggers City.

They studied the diagrams for a long time. If the ’92 schematic was detailed at the level of an amusement-park map, the ’12 as-built drawing was only a little more detailed than that. Anna wasn’t good at reading plans, but it didn’t take much to see the two were almost identical, with only minute differences.

“There aren’t many differences.”

“This is way off from what I expected.”

Rachel tilted her head and continued.

“The initial schematic and the as-built drawing after completion are almost the same.”

Rachel and Anna met each other’s eyes.

“What is it?”

“It’s odd.”

Rachel frowned and shook her head.

“I don’t get it. Garrett definitely told me... they couldn’t carry out the southern Baggers City work because of budget shortfalls.”

But judged by the 2012 final as-built drawing alone, the work looked to have proceeded as planned on the basis of the initial design. Some segments had slight route adjustments due to ground conditions, but there were no major differences in overall structure.

At the same instant, the same doubt rose in both of them. Anna spoke first.

“The southern area still floods habitually every rainy season.”

“Right.”

“If you go by the as-built drawing, the work was done properly—so there’s no reason it should flood at all, is there?”

“Exactly. It shouldn’t.”

They analyzed the 2012 as-built drawing. As Rachel slowly traced the plan with a fingertip, she said:

“The more I look, the more helpfully this is laid out. It’s a national facility; did they really need to publish something this helpful?”

The ’12 drawing had details that the ’92 schematic lacked. It included a north-south-east-west orientation marker, the positions of level-gauging drainage pumps, segment labels, numbered positions of ventilation shafts, and even brief ground-level place names near some shafts.

It looked less like a technical drawing for specialists and more like a map designed to be easily read for the purpose of bringing someone in.

“Especially—look at Ventilation Shaft 3. I think I know where that is.”

Pointing to the number 3 shaft on the plan, Rachel said,

“It’s clearly around the water-level observation station.”

“If there really is a shaft here, that implies a reason to circulate air through it, right? There must really be a secret facility under this.”

Anna alternated her gaze between the ventilation-shaft and drainage-pump markings and organized her thoughts. If you blocked the inflow of water from the surface to the tunnel’s core and repurposed the segments where water should run, the tunnel would no longer be a “drainage facility” but the most discreet hideout in the world.

A scenario sketched itself in her head. What if someone had deliberately sealed the drainage routes and built a structure inside for a completely different purpose? And what if that’s why parts of southern Baggers City flooded every year?

Anna suddenly thought of Rachel’s husband. He had worked maintenance on the drainage tunnel. If he had happened to see this “modified tunnel” with his own eyes and raised the issue with someone—then his death might not have been an accident.

But Anna didn’t dare voice that last thought. The look on Rachel’s face, sunk in thought, was more serious than ever.

“I don’t understand.”

Rachel spoke, her expression grave.

“What don’t you understand?”

“Say the southern work really was done per the final as-built drawing. Garrett was a tunnel maintenance worker. He had no reason to lie to me about the work being halted for budget reasons.”

“Maybe Garrett truly didn’t know.”

After chewing on Anna’s words for a long moment, Rachel seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion; she squeezed her eyes shut and drew in a sharp breath. She looked genuinely frightened. As if not wanting to think about it any further, she steadied herself and abruptly changed the subject.

“Think about that later. First, let’s identify entry points.”

Across the 3 km segment that passed under the heart of Baggers City, the plan showed five access routes connecting into the tunnel interior.

“Plenty of entrances. Getting in should be easy.”

“Hm. Will it?”

Rachel suddenly narrowed her eyes like a detective.

“If it were a place you could use a normal entrance, Garrett—who worked underground for over twenty years—wouldn’t have been ignorant of a secret site.”

Studying the plan afresh, Rachel suddenly looked up and asked,

“But who wrote this ‘special feature’ in the first place? They’re hell-bent on showing what someone was desperate to hide.”

A peculiar chill crept up the back of Anna’s head.

“You said this issue was published in ’12?”

“Yeah.”

Anna swallowed and carefully slid the books aside. She rechecked the publication date of the Helso Research Promotion Fund Summary Report she’d been reading before Rachel arrived. It, too, had been published in June 2012.

That report contained the conduct of the CellGuard Research Laboratory—granted $9.91 million despite bottom-tier review scores—and construction records for the tunnel that had been concealed even from personnel associated with the drainage system. It was nothing but a list of facts, but to those intent on hiding something, it would have been a clear threat.

For certain people, this brave record would have been a thorn in the eye. Given that they’d found no record of the drainage tunnel despite touring a range of public facilities in Baggers City, someone had likely deleted the records deliberately. The same was probably true of the CellGuard records. If the Gulf Line library’s renovation and closure hadn’t kept these materials in warehouse storage, the books they now held would surely already be gone.

Two periodicals from June 2012, published in the same window. Could it really be coincidence that records with the potential to threaten someone were released then, of all times?

Who had the nerve to do this? And were the ones who tried to erase these materials Hybris, just as she suspected?

Anna and Rachel spread the final tunnel plan again and, looking up architectural dictionaries online, began pinpointing possible points of entry. There were five access routes within the 3 km segment, and several of them were already closed.

Anna pointed to one of them, an inspection entrance at the far western edge. It was labeled “West Line Phase 2 Segment.”

“This one’s closed. Not that I was counting on strolling through the main door anyway...”

Her eyes flicked between the closed main entrance and the explanatory note. For some reason she couldn’t tear her gaze away from that closed entry.

“‘West Line’—does that mean a rail facility?”

“Right. Think of it as heavy rail running between the underground and the surface.”

Rachel spoke on, visibly excited.

“In two years it’s supposed to extend to the neighborhood next to ours. Buses are killing me—I hope it opens fast.”

Thinking of Rachel’s no-car situation, Anna nodded silently. Pointing to the architectural symbol for the main entrance, she asked:

“Where would this be, roughly? No place name’s given, so I can’t tell.”

Rachel pulled the plan closer and studied it carefully.

“It’s opposite Ventilation Facility 3, so... mm. If it’s across the river, then it looks like the Manuels district.”

“Manuels?”

Arms folded, Anna frowned, not following.

“Was there heavy rail there?”

The Manuels district was a high-end commercial zone in Baggers City where a square foot of land could fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars. With Sun Haven and Linhart nearby, it abutted wealthy residential areas, and residents opposed to expanding public transit dominated opinion. It hit the news repeatedly as rail plans were scrapped over and over under the logic that a station would let outsiders into the neighborhood and threaten residents’ safety.

“They started building it. Brought in excavators and began work, then stopped for ‘safety reasons.’ Everyone knows the safety line was an excuse—the plan got axed because the rich pushed back. Oh come on, you didn’t know? It’s a pretty well-known story.”

With narrowed eyes, Rachel shot a sideways look at the rich girl right beside her and muttered to herself:

“The rich.”

“That’s not fair. I didn’t do anything.”

After a brief, mutually disapproving stare, the two went back to the plan. Using Ventilation Shaft 3 as a reference point, they calculated the scale ratio and, with an online map, triangulated the position of the main entrance.

Across the Nathan River, in a block at the eastern edge of the Manuels district—where the riverfront stretched out like an airport runway—a satellite image showed a vast square building.

“This is...”

At Rachel’s breathy exclamation, both women lifted their heads and met each other’s eyes. A strange silence passed between them, as if each were searching the other’s face for the answer. What they had found on the map was the Baggers City Integrated Psychological Health Center—the clinic whose founding director was the counselor Jackson Cliff, who worked with people who had overcome grief.