The Descent

Chapter 49 - Beneath The Surface

Denton's immediate problem was gaining access to the facility behind the outside door. There was no access door visible that he could see, which meant that there were some other means of opening it that wasn't obvious. As far as he could tell, there were no visible handles or keypads either. Denton struggled back onto his feet and stumbled towards the door while his eyes scanned every inch of it and the concrete wall around it.

He was just about to reach out and touch it when two sets of lights above the door turned on, illuminating Denton and the area in front of the door. Denton gasped and took a step back and threw his arm up in the air to protect his eyes from the lights. He relaxed when he heard the unmistakable rumbling of a door slowly sliding open, revealing the inside of the garage.

Denton wasted little time and walked into the garage as quickly as he could. He had barely made it inside the door before the opening mechanism reversed and the door started to close. A loud clang echoed through the garage as the door shut.

As expected, three snowtrekkers were parked just in front of him, the melting snow and ice pooling on the floor below them. They had arrived not long ago, that much was obvious. The drying remnants of wet footsteps leading towards the door at the rear of the garage confirmed that whoever had been riding them were somewhere inside the structure.

He removed his facemask, hat, and gloves and dropped them on the floor next to the snowtrekkers, his eyes fixed on the door towards the rear of the garage. Behind it, somewhere, he expected to find his targets but what else? What was this facility he had stumbled upon? Tanner had found no record of it, which meant it was an off the books project, not intended to be known to or visited by the public. Was that a good or a bad thing? Was it a secret factory of doomsday weapons or a love shack? It was too early to tell, and he didn't have enough information. He sorely missed Tanner at that very moment.

Denton cracked the door open and stepped through, careful to close the door without a sound. Beyond the door, a tube-shaped corridor illuminated by a single line of fluorescent lighting stretched out about fifty yards. A blue-tinted concrete finish covered the walls while various pipes and power lines stretched throughout the tunnel on the right wall. Denton covered the distance to the door on the far side in mere seconds, took a deep breath and cracked the door.

The other side of the door was quiet. He swung the door open and found himself standing in an elevator lobby. The elevator doors were directly ahead, a door to the stairs accessible on his immediate right. A short hallway branched off to the left with a door on each side. One of the rooms was an equipment room where Denton again noticed the fresh, wet tracks from recent visitors and discarded outdoor gear piled on a bench in the middle of the room. Across the hall, a fully equipped kitchen complete with stove, refrigerator and a table large enough for eight people served as a dining area. Empty water bottles filled a trash can in the corner, and empty energy bar wrappings had been left on the table. His stomach reminded him with a growl that it had been a while since he had anything to drink or eat.

Denton walked across the hallway and shed his outdoor gear in the equipment room and then returned to the kitchen. He devoured a bottle of water and half a sandwich he found in the fridge. A couple of energy bars that remained were stuffed in his pant pocket.

With his bodily cravings satisfied for the time being Denton returned to the elevator, put his finger on the call button and was about to press it when he hesitated and looked up at the floor indicator. His heart skipped a beat as he realized he almost made a terrible mistake. The elevator was on the bottom floor at the moment. Calling the elevator would very likely alert whoever had gone before him that someone was coming down the elevator. If the movement of the elevator didn't, the opening of the elevator doors certainly would. Did he really want them to know he was coming? He decided that the answer to that question was a firm no. To understand what was going on, he had to proceed undetected to the extent possible.