Chapter 301: To the Pylow Labs - II

The ramp led into a wider corridor, and the doors changed.

They were heavier here, divided into separate compartments with cameras on both sides of each access point. The walls carried markings Kordula didn’t need to read twice.

AWP.

She slowed down, and the squad slowed with her.

Yellow lines were painted across the floor ahead, and at the end of the corridor stood a bulkhead with a narrow reinforced window set into it. A recessed mount sat above the frame.

Unlike the ones she read about in the Silverpeak reports, this mount still held its weapon.

"Is it about to shoot us?" Kordula pressed herself against the nearest door frame.

"No," the squad leader said, checking his map. "It’s gray. Neutral, for now."

Kordula stared at him for a second before remembering she had one too.

It took her longer than she liked to find it among the panels. When it finally opened, the corridor laid itself out in front of her: blue markers for the squad and the Engineers, one for herself, and a single gray one sitting above the bulkhead.

Beyond the bulkhead, there was nothing at all.

She stepped away from the door frame and closed the map.

"Stay behind the second line," she said. "Don’t step past it."

The DASF operators stopped exactly where she told them.

Kordula went as far as the line allowed and looked through the window.

The lights on the other side were on, and a long corridor ran toward a set of closed laboratory doors. Everything down there looked orderly, apart from the bodies.

They lay against the inner face of the bulkhead, more than she could count at a glance, and scattered along the corridor behind it. Nearly a year had passed, and whatever the ventilation did to the air, it dried them out without doing much else.

Some still wore laboratory coats. Some were twisted in ways a body shouldn’t bend, their clothing torn, their hands curled against the floor. The walls around them were pocked and scorched in long lines.

They had been trying to get out, or at least some of them had.

Kordula couldn’t tell which ones had turned and which ones hadn’t. From where she stood, they all looked the same now.

The squad leader stepped up to the line beside her and looked through the window without saying anything. Then he opened the channel.

"Northern Command. Remains beyond the bulkhead. A lot of them. No movement."

"Nothing’s moving on our picture either," Marianne said. "Just the gray contact above the door. What is it?"

Kordula looked up at the mount.

The weapon was seated and connected. A small indicator on the housing was lit, and the ammunition feed ran back into the wall, full.

"An AWP emplacement. It’s powered."

"Active?"

Kordula didn’t answer, because the mount turned.

It moved without any sound she could hear, swinging a few degrees until the barrel lined up with the squad. The DASF operators brought their rifles up in the same instant.

"Don’t," Kordula said. "Lower them. It hasn’t fired."

The squad leader held for a second longer, then lowered his weapon, and the rest of the squad did the same.

The mount didn’t move again. On Kordula’s Radar, the marker above the bulkhead stayed gray.

A display beside the bulkhead lit up.

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AWP SECURITY AUTHORITY — CONTAINMENT BOUNDARY

CONTAMINATION STATUS: ACTIVE

PERSONNEL DETECTED: 8

AUTHORIZATION: NONE

ENTRY DENIED. WITHDRAW FROM THE BOUNDARY.

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A voice read it out at the same time. It was flat and even, and it gave every line the same weight.

Kordula knew that cadence. She had spent years listening to it at the power plant.

It wasn’t ASS-116. ASS-116 was offline back at the power plant, and she was the one who made sure of that.

This one, though, was wide awake.

"Northern Command," the squad leader said, "site security is active. It’s denying entry. No hostile action so far."

"Hold where you are. Don’t cross that line."

"Holding."

Kordula looked through the window again, at the bodies against the bulkhead and the weapon above it.

At the NPP, the system had protected people it could no longer let go. Here, there was nobody left to protect, at least not among the staff.

The display went dark, and the only sound was the hum.

Then the corridor lights came up a step, all the way back toward the ramp, and the display lit again with a different header.

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FACILITY OPERATIONS

IDENTITY VERIFICATION IN PROGRESS

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The mount stayed on them.

A pale line of light passed over the squad from somewhere in the ceiling, one person at a time. The display filled line by line as it did.

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NO RECORD

NO RECORD

NO RECORD

NO RECORD

NO RECORD

NO RECORD

NO RECORD

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The light reached Kordula last and held on her longer than on the others.

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RECORD FOUND

WEISSENBERG, KORDULA

DAEDALUS — AUTOMATED WEAPONRY PROGRAM

OVERSEER

SITE ASSIGNMENT: GREFORT CITY

STATUS: VERIFYING

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"Overseer," Marianne said over the channel. "What’s it showing you?"

Kordula read her name again before she answered.

"It’s my record," she said. "It found my name."

"From the power plant?"

"No, from its local database." Kordula looked at the last line. "It isn’t finished yet."

She had never seen this particular site’s system, but she had seen enough of the same architecture to recognize it from the header alone.

"The one that just spoke first is the security authority," she said. "It handles access for doors, weapons, and containment. This one is Facility Operations. It runs everything else—power, air, water, the maintenance units, whatever work the site has scheduled. They’re built separately on purpose. Neither one is supposed to be able to give the other orders."

"And the light?" Marianne asked.

"A personnel accountability sweep. It’s checking everyone inside against its own staff list." Kordula watched the display.

The display changed.

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FACILITY OPERATIONS — SITE PCL-2

PERSONNEL ACCOUNTABILITY

ASSIGNED PERSONNEL — LIVING: 0

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Nobody on the channel said anything for a moment. Then the lines below it filled in.

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WEISSENBERG, KORDULA

STATUS: VERIFIED

CLASSIFICATION: VISITING PERSONNEL

PRIOR SITE ACCESS: 1 — ESCORTED — AWP CONFIGURATION REVIEW

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The last line brought back a memory Kordula hadn’t thought about in years.

She remembered the trip, but not much of the place. It was years ago, early in her time as an AWP engineer, before she became an Overseer.

She was driven for most of a day with a hood over her head, walked through several doors she never saw, and was left in a room that was colder than it had any right to be. Two guards stood by the door the whole time and didn’t speak to her once.

She spent the day going through a security configuration someone upstairs wanted a second opinion on. When she finished, the hood went back on and she was driven out the same way.

She always guessed it was somewhere in the north. Nobody ever confirmed it, and after a while, she stopped asking.

"I’ve been here before," she said.

"When?" Marianne asked.

"A long time ago. They didn’t let me see where." She looked down the corridor behind her, toward the ramp. "I don’t recognize any of it."

The display went dark again, and the security header came back.

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AWP SECURITY AUTHORITY — CONTAINMENT BOUNDARY

VISITING PERSONNEL DO NOT HOLD CONTAINMENT CLEARANCE

ENTRY DENIED.

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The voice read it in the same even tone as before. The mount above the bulkhead didn’t move.

It lasted only a few seconds before Facility Operations took the display back.

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FACILITY OPERATIONS

OPERATIONAL CONTINUITY EXCEPTION

ASSIGNED PERSONNEL AVAILABLE: 0

SUPERVISOR APPROVAL REQUESTS PENDING: 3,412

POWER GENERATION: DEGRADED, APPROACHING CRITICAL

REMOTE SITE CONTACT: PARTIAL

MAINTENANCE BACKLOG: CRITICAL

REQUEST: VISITING PERSONNEL TO ASSUME TEMPORARY OPERATIONAL CONTACT

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Kordula let out a long breath.

"What is it doing now?" the squad leader asked.

"Invoking a continuity exception." She kept her eyes on the display. "When a site loses all of its assigned staff, operations is allowed to ask the nearest credentialed person on record to stand in as a contact. It isn’t command, and I don’t get to run anything. It just means there’s finally a human it’s allowed to hand its problems to."

"What about security? Won’t it object again?"

Kordula’s brows twitched. It seemed the DASF still took what happened at the power plant a little personally.

"It can object, but it can’t block the exception." She pointed at the number in the middle of the list. "Three thousand requests for approval, and nobody was left to answer any of them. It just needs someone to handle those, and I happen to be the only one left on its list."

"Does accepting commit you to anything serious?" Marianne asked.

It sounded like Marianne didn’t want her stuck up here doing odd jobs for a machine either.

"It’s just temporary. Once all these requests are handled, it’ll revoke my clearance."

There was a short pause on the channel.

"That’s very convenient. I thought your automated security was rigid."

"Security is. This is operations." Kordula glanced up at the mount. "Operations was always allowed some room for emergencies. ASS-116 was, let’s just say, an exceptional edge case."

Kordula stepped up to the display, still behind the second line, and looked for a slot or a reader. There was neither. The system already scanned her once, and she guessed that was all it needed.

"Weissenberg, Kordula," she said. "Accepted."

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FACILITY OPERATIONS

TEMPORARY OPERATIONAL CONTACT: WEISSENBERG, KORDULA

ESCORT: 7

BIOLOGICAL SCREEN: CLEAR

CONTAINMENT BOUNDARY ACCESS: GRANTED UNDER EXCEPTION

SECURITY AUTHORITY OBJECTION: LOGGED

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Something heavy released inside the bulkhead. The seals around the frame hissed, and the door began to slide aside.

"Masks on," Kordula said. "It says we’re clean. The other side isn’t."

The squad did it before she finished the sentence. The Engineers followed.

"Northern Command," the squad leader said, "boundary access granted. We’re moving through."

"Copy. Take it slow."

The air on the other side was dry and stale, and it smelled faintly of old smoke under the filters. The DASF operators went first, stepping carefully between the remains at the bulkhead, and the Engineers came after them with their scanners held low.

Kordula went last.

The mount turned with her as she passed underneath it, following her until she was through the door. On her Radar, the marker stayed gray.

Farther down the corridor, another display woke up as they approached. It didn’t show a warning or a header this time. It showed a list.

The first item at the top was power generation. The second was a transmission line she didn’t recognize. Kordula scrolled down, and the list kept going.