Bunker 77

10. Pieces of History

"Did you get it?" Henri whispered, glancing over his shoulder every once in a while.

Ignoring his question, I focused on the task in front of me. The door of the vault may have seemed like a normal door at first glance, but it was far from it. I took out the vial Uncle Atheer gave me from my pocket. The dark red liquid blended with the darkness. The only source of light was the torch in Paula's hand.

Multiple prints of the hammer's head remained all over the steel door as a sign of the curiosity of the Sinarians. They must have abandoned the place when they realised it was impossible to open it.

"That's the key?" Henri asked, which earned a shush from Paula.

There was a cylinder padlock at the knob, just like the vizier described in his diary. Then, I rotated the left side of the lock three times clockwise until it was open with a click, revealing a hole. I opened the lid and grimaced as the memory of how I got the liquid flashed in my mind.

"Only a drop of blood from King Aryan or his direct descendants can open the door."

I gasped.  "Blood? As in literal blood?"

Faris, the discoverer of the vizier's diary, nodded grimly. He handed the book to me and showed me the line. "That's what the vizier wrote."

Uncle Atheer brushed a hand down his face. "We don't have any other way."

Uncle Atheer made his way into one of his long cupboards, the one in which he stored his medicines, herbs, and first aid kit. He took out a small vial and a fruit knife before sitting down again beside us.

Before any of us could say anything, Uncle Atheer ran his knife over his finger. Not even a flinch came from him as the blood dripped into the vial. I nearly fainted at the sight.

"Uncle Atheer!"

"Professor!"

Shaking my head at the thought, I dropped a tiny bit of the blood onto the knob, where a little hole was. Then, I rotated the padlock in the opposite direction to close it. A couple of seconds passed before the knob glowed brightly and the door let out a shriek.

The three of us shared a relief grin when the door flew open. The door closed itself with a thud after all of us had stepped inside the vault. Paula used her torch to search for a light switch, which was just beside the entrance.

My jaw dropped in fascination and I was sure the other two felt the same thing. Never would I thought something like that existed in the same bunker I was born.

A chandelier in the middle of the vault lit up brightly, like a sea of diamonds glistening under the sun. Countless rows of bookshelves and a row of tables in the middle of the vault greeted our sight.

I read a book in the headquarters' library where it was said that the Bahari Kingdom was a wealthy kingdom, with an abundance of gold and minerals, but when we lost the war, the Sinarians took all the wealth to their kingdom.

We became slaves in our own land, and the stories of our once great kingdom fell into an endless abyss until a group of Bahari's youths founded the Freedom Movement. Three main branches were set up in the movement: the warrior team, the research team, and the spy team.

For the past sixty years, the Freedom Movement worked in silence, but with more and more Baharis becoming aware of the upper class' lies, they were able to attack several military bases and take over the towns.

"I will not leave the bunker tonight, not with an empty hand," I vowed under my breath, taking in the countless rows of bookshelves in the vault.

"All these books must be very valuable to our history. They must have known that our army was losing the war to build the place," said Paula, tracing her finger against the flower cravings on the wooden bookshelf.