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Past the threshold, our flashlights revealed dead pill bugs on the concrete steps, some crushed and some as whole and round as buckshot

There were also the impressions of shoes and paws in the dust These overlaid tracks were both ascending and descending

"Me and Orson," I said, identifying the prints "From previous visits"

"What’s below?"

"Three subterranean levels, each bigger than the hangar itself"

"Massive"

"Mucho"

"What did they do down there?"

"Bad stuff"

"Don’t get so technical on ar has been stripped to the bare concrete Even the air-filtration, pluth of duct, every pipe, every wire and switch Many structures in Wyvern ree was pursued, the operation was conducted with an eye for the most valuable items that could be removed with the least effort The hallways and roohly that you uilty made a Herculean effort to eradicate every possible clue

As we descended the stairs side by side, a flat metallic echo of my voice bounced immediately back to me at some points, while at other places the walls absorbed my words as effectively as the acousticalbooth froht music at KBAY

I said, "They scoured away virtually every trace of what they were doing here--every trace but one--and I don’t think they were just concerned about protecting national security I think…it’s just a feeling, but judging by the way they totally gutted these three floors, I sense they were afraid of what happened here…but not just afraid Ashaenetic labs?"

"Can’t have been That requires absolute biological isolation"

"So?"

"There would be decontamination chambers everywhere--between suites of labs, at every elevator entrance, at every exit from the stairwell Those spaces would still be identifiable for what they were, even after everything was torn out of them"

"You have a knack for this detective crap," Bobby said as we reached the botto

"Aweso," I admitted

"Maybe I could be your Watson"

"Nancy Drew didn’t ith Watson That was Holht-hand dude?" Bobby wondered

"Don’t think she had one Nancy was a lone wolfette"

"One tough bitch, huh?"

"That’s ht have been a decon chamber…and it’s full-on weird You’ll see"

We didn’t speak further as we proceeded to the deepest of the three subterranean levels The only sounds were the soft scrape of our rubber shoe soles on the concrete and the crunch of dead pill bugs

In spite of the pistol-grip shotgun he carried, Bobby’s relaxed derace hich he descended the stairs would have convinced anyone else that he was carefree To so himself Bobby pretty much always enjoys himself, in all but thethat I--and perhaps only I--could tell that he was not, at thisin his mind, it was o, I hadn’t been aware that Bobby Halloway--Huck Finn without the angst--could be either rattled or spooked Recent events had revealed that even this natural-born Zen ht beats per iness, because the stairas sufficiently cheerless and oppressive to give the heebie-jeebies to a Prozac-popping nun with an attitude as sweet as , concrete walls, concrete steps An iron pipe, painted black and fixed to one wall, served as a handrail The dense air itself see to concrete, for it was cold, thick, and dry with the scent of lime that leached froht than it reflected, and so in spite of our two flashlights, ound doard in gloom, like medieval monks on our way to say prayers for the souls of dead brethren in the catacombs under a monastery

The atn featuring a skull and crossbones above huge red letters warning of deadly levels of radioactivity Or at least soed rat bones

The final basement in this facility--where no dust has yet settled and no pill bugs have ventured--has a peculiar floor plan, beginning with a wide corridor, in the forated oval, that extends around the entire perimeter, rather like a racetrack A series of rooms, of different widths but identical depths, open off one side of this corridor--occupying the infield of the track--and through some of them you can reach a second oval corridor, which is concentric with the first; not as wide or as long as the first, it is nonetheless enorle central cha roo h which you can enter the innermost sanctum This transitional space is a ten-foot-square chah a circular portal five feet in diameter Inside this cubicle, to the left, another circular portal of the sas were once fitted with formidable steel hatches, like those in the bulkheads betatertight compartments in a sub h I aical-research labs, one of the functions of the airlock ht have been to prevent bacteria, spores, dust, and other conta carried into or out of the cha to and from that inner sanctu solution as well as tospectrums of ultraviolet radiation

My hunch, however, is that the egg room was pressurized and that this airlock served the same purpose as one aboard a spaceship Or perhaps it functioned as a decompression chamber of the type deep-sea divers resort to when at risk of the bends

In any event, this transitional cha into the egg roo in the airlock with Bobby, I trained ht on the raised, curved threshold of the inner portal and swept it around the entire ri-room wall: five feet of poured-in-place, steel-reinforced concrete The entryway is so deep, in fact, that it is essentially a five-foot-long tunnel

Bobby whistled softly "Bunker architecture"

"No question, it’s a contain"

"Like what?"

I shrugged "Soifts are left for ht? Mystery Train?"

"Yeah It was on the floor, dead center of the egg room I don’t think I found it, exactly I think it was left there to be found, which is different And on another night, while I was in the next rooraph of my mother here in the airlock"