Jeremy Robinson - SecondWorld

Vesely stood at one of three keyboards mounted to the wall beneath the large diagram.

“What are you doing?” Miller asked.

“Is like bookstore interface. Type in name. Find room.”

Miller looked over his shoulder and saw the name “Elizabeth Adler” typed in. He reached out to stop Vesely, just in case the system was monitored, but the man hit the Enter key too fast.

Nothing happened. And no alarms sounded.

Vesely deleted the name and typed in “Roger Brodeur.”

Same result.

“What was Brodeur’s real name?” Vesely asked.

“Eichmann. Lance Eichmann.”

Vesely typed in the name and hit Enter. A door near the bottom of the spiral glowed brown and revealed the text: Level 4. Room 37.

Miller wanted nothing more than to swoop in and rescue Adler, but the mission had to come first. “There isn’t time,” he said.

Vesely looked at him with a single raised eyebrow. “I am not being sentimental, Survivor. She has been here longer. She would have come in through hangar. And as granddaughter of a man and woman without whom none of this would have been possible, it is likely she may have been presented to those who might remember them fondly.” He pointed at the brown Security and Control area. “Perhaps Kammler himself.”

The idea of not finding Adler never sat well with him so he quickly agreed with Vesely’s assessment and said, “Level four, room thirty-seven it is. If she’s not there we’ll kick down the Security and Control doors. Sound like a plan?”

“Works for me,” Pale Horse said.

“Is good,” Vesely added.

Miller pushed the elevator call button. A pair of doors to his right opened immediately. All three jumped back. The elevator was not empty.

A single red eye stared at them, glowing eight inches above the floor. Miller recognized the design as being similar to those in Antarctica—a robo-Betty. The engine whirred as the thing turned toward Vesely. The red light pulsed for a moment and then turned green.

“What’s it doing?” Pale Horse asked.

“Can’t be facial recognition,” Miller said.

It turned toward Pale Horse and began flashing red again.

“Is testing DNA,” Vesely said with urgency. “Genetics. For purity!”

The light turned green and the device rotated toward Miller. “You’re sure?” he asked.

“U.S. Homeland Security has them,” Vesely urged. “Were going to be in airports!”

Miller couldn’t risk him being wrong. He didn’t know if this thing functioned like the ones outside, but he had to take the risk. He drew his pistol and shot the thing’s red eye out. For a moment, nothing happened. But then the disk at the center began to spin. Ding, the doors began to close. The disk launched into the air and fired its projectiles, but the three men were unharmed. They heard the spray of metal balls ricocheting off the metal insides of the elevator, but not one made it out.

Miller hit the elevator’s call button and the doors opened again. A hundred metal balls the size of small marbles covered the floor. “Okay. They scan DNA and don’t respond well to being shot. Good to know.” He didn’t see a second payload and began sweeping the metal balls out of the elevator with his foot.

“I think it had scanned you already,” Vesely said. “The delay is probably from analyzing. Homeland units take one hour to analyze.”

“How could these be so much faster?” Pale Horse asked, helping Miller with the cleanup.

“Because they’re only looking for one thing,” Miller said. “Racial purity. Looks like half-Jews don’t pass the test.”

After cleaning out the metal balls and the remains of the robo-Betty, they entered the elevator. Miller hit the button for level four. The doors closed and the elevator dropped. Thirty seconds and five floors later, the doors opened to another long, white hallway.

Vesely and Pale Horse led the way this time to give the impression that they were escorting Miller. The general’s uniform was a good disguise, but if too many people looked at his face, someone was bound to recognize him. He lowered his cap, putting his eyes in shadow, and walked with a rigid step, doing his best to ooze malevolence. If people were afraid to look him in the eyes, this might just work.

When they reached the end of the hallway, Vesely and Pale Horse stopped so fast that Miller bumped into them. All three stumbled out of the hallway. Miller quickly looked for witnesses—he might have to smack the two men around if anyone witnessed their bungling—but saw no one. Then he looked beyond the pair and saw what had stopped them in their tracks. He stepped forward slowly, placed his hands on the railing, and looked up with widening eyes.

No one said a word. They just stood there looking up, gripping the white metal railing that followed the spiraling ramp down three levels and up thirty-one levels. It was the up that held their attention.

The diagram hadn’t done the structure justice. It was like standing in the middle of a skyscraper and looking up through its core, all the way to the ceiling. Almost everything was white, like one big sterile laboratory. And the place glowed with radiance—like the noonday sun on newly fallen snow. The light came from what had to be millions of bright, and energy-saving, LED lights.

But it was the ceiling, or rather what hung from it, that held their attention the longest. Two red flags, each five stories tall, hung from the ceiling. Both were crimson with large white circles in the center. One held a black swastika in the center of the circle, the other a large black SecondWorld symbol.

As Miller’s shock wore off, his other senses filtered in. The air felt cool and dry, and smelled of ozone—the atmosphere was being conditioned. No oxygenless air down here. His ears perked up. He heard voices. Hundreds of them. Thousands. He searched the levels above and below level four and saw people everywhere, talking, laughing, swapping stories. Their voices echoed throughout the chamber. Miller looked down and saw a large open atrium complete with what looked like a marble floor and fountain. People walked and talked, sat by the fountain with snacking kids. But the people weren’t alone.

“The place is like a giant fucking fun-town mall,” Pale Horse said.

Miller saw several robo-Bettys navigating through the sea of humanity. He couldn’t count how many as the throng moved and shifted, but there were a lot. And as the Bettys passed people, their lights flashed between red and green.

“They’re constantly scanning the people for racial purity,” Miller said, pointing out the Bettys.

“Perhaps increasing standards,” Vesely offered. “Or looking for stowaways.” He looked at Miller. “Like you.”

Miller agreed with a nod. He would have to avoid the DNA-detecting robo-Bettys.

He turned toward a group of laughing people. While this was an underground bunker, it was also luxurious. These people were on vacation while the rest of the world suffered. He gripped the railing hard, fighting to control his rising anger, and then remembered why they were on level four.

Adler.

Room thirty-seven.

“Let’s go,” he said, and started down the curving ramp. The first door he passed was forty-two. He counted out ahead and figured the door to Brodeur’s room was halfway around the circle. Three men, one dressed in blue and two in brown, stood in front of an open door between them and their destination.

As he neared the men, Miller realized he was now in front of Vesely and Pale Horse. His face would be hard to hide. He looked to the right, out over the spiraling core, and ignored the men. They, however, did not ignore him.