John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

Loaded up with her backpack, duffel bag, and the launcher swung over her shoulder, Tillie raised the lantern above her head. “This way.”

They all followed. After the melee on the porch, the silence of the storm system was unnerving. Elias noticed that his ears were still ringing, and he assumed that all of the others suffered from the same discomfort. The channel they were traveling was constructed of cast-in-place concrete walls and ceiling. The whorls and textured patterns from the plywood form boards decorated the surfaces, and every eight feet, where the panels had butted together, was a slightly bulging linear ridge of cement. Their path was covered with sand, a result of years of surface erosion carried into the system by torrential rains; Elias did not know if it was obscuring a concrete surface or if the channel had been built with only walls and a lid, left open to the soil beneath.

They had covered several hundred yards, and Elias sensed that they were traveling slightly downhill in what would be the direction of the water flow. Because of the preternatural quiet of the system, Tillie did not need to shout as she warned over her shoulder, “We need to be careful up ahead. No one get ahead of me.”

“No problem,” Stone replied, breathing heavier from the pace.

“Am I going too fast for you, Eric?” There was a definite tease to her voice.

“No,” Stone panted. “I’m fine. More than two months of sitting on my butt got me a little out of shape, that’s all. But thanks for asking.”

Tillie giggled as they reached what appeared to be the end of the channel. “Here’s the deal. This is the retention basin. All of the storm drains from all over Aegis dump into this.”

She had stopped and Elias moved up to the front. Their channel had abruptly ended, and he and Tillie were standing on a concrete ledge, which extended approximately eighteen inches from the side walls. Beyond was darkness.

Elias kicked a small rock off the edge and listened as it disappeared into the abyss. Several seconds passed with no sound of impact before Tillie explained, “It’s sand down there. You’re not going to hear anything hit.”

“You’ve been down there?”

“No. Too far down. Sheer concrete walls all the way to the bottom. No access ladders all the way around.”

“How far down is it?”

“About thirty feet or so. Enough to hurt a lot if you fell.”

“How do you know what’s at the bottom?”

“I was curious and threw a flare down.”

“I don’t understand,” Stone said as he joined them at the opening. “I would have thought that the storm drains would dump all of the water outside Aegis somewhere.”

Tillie shook her head. “Remember, this place was built with the idea that no one was supposed to be able to leave. How long would it take the residents to figure out that all they had to do was follow the dry storm drain system to the outside? No, like I said, this is what they call a retention basin. They calculate the maximum amount of runoff that can end up in the system from a one-hundred-year storm, probably add a fifty-percent fudge factor, to be safe, and then basically build a big swimming pool that will hold all of it. The only difference is that this swimming pool has only dirt on the bottom. No concrete. No plaster. Just the soil.”

“So when it rains,” Wilson chimed in, “all of the drains carry the water to this pit, which is designed to hold it all until it can percolate into the ground.”

“Huh!” Stone grunted.

Tillie rolled her eyes and muttered to Elias, “Real bright buddy you’ve got there.”

Elias laughed. “He’s a man of few words. So where do we go from here?”

Tillie leaned outward, holding the lantern over the edge. “See. We’ve got this ledge. It’s about a foot and a half wide, and it goes all the way around to all of the other inlets. We need to get to the channel that’s two openings this way.”

Elias eyed the ledge. “Why that one?”

“That channel takes us to an atrium which is right next to a service closet which….”

“Gets us to your place.”

“Right.”

“Do you think your little den is safe? If they made a move on Wilson’s jungle, they might have gotten wise to you, also.”

“Little den? Hey, that’s my ‘batcave.’ Besides, we won’t know if we don’t go.”

Stone was still staring into the darkness of the retention basin. “How do you know about all of these routes?”

Tillie gave him one of her trademark shrugs and said, “I like to explore and I’ve had twelve years to do it.”

“But don’t any of the others know about all of these tunnels and channels?”

“People really don’t,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone. “They take things on face value. They are told ‘here’s a room,’ ‘here’s a hallway,’ ‘there’s the bathroom.’ That’s all they need. I guess I’ve always wondered what’s behind things and underneath things and above things.”

“Given a choice,” Wilson joined in the conversation, “Tillie will travel three times the required distance from point A to point B as long as she can use some secret passageway.”

“I think I would have been happy living in one of those old castles in Europe — you know, one of the places with all of the hidden doors and passages behind the walls.”

Elias was beginning to get spooked listening to the echoes from all of their voices. “We’d better get going. If Kreitzmann is getting more aggressive, I don’t think dawdling is a good idea.”

“10-4!” Tillie snapped back at him, saluting.

Stifling a laugh at her antics, he simply said, “Lead the way.”

Still carrying her homemade sleeping-gas launcher, the duffel bag, and wearing her pack, Tillie casually stepped out onto the ledge and began walking, as if she were strolling on a sidewalk.

“I can carry that bag,” Stone offered.

She did not even bother to look back as a single snort came from her. With a sigh of resignation, Elias followed her, carrying his rifle. Despite her example, he crab-walked along the ledge, keeping his back against the concrete wall. Wilson came out next, mimicking Elias’ method. Stone came out last, doing the same.

“My dear Tillie,” Wilson called in a raised voice after some minutes had passed, “I know that you so enjoy showing off, but you are the one with the light.”

Tillie stopped and looked back, swinging the lantern around behind herself and seeing the three men about twenty yards back. “You’re kidding me, right? Would you like me to install a handrail first before you all come this way?”

Taking a deep breath and forcing himself to ignore the absolute blackness to his right, Elias turned, faced her, and began walking.

“See, I knew you could do it,” she teased with the inflection of a mother cheering on her five-year-old who had just made it ten feet on his new bicycle with training wheels.

“Give me the damn duffel bag,” he ordered as he caught up to where she was standing.

Without waiting for a reply, he grabbed the rope loop at the top of the bag and swung it off her shoulder and onto his own.

She actually wavered on the ledge for a moment as the counterbalance was abruptly removed. Elias started to reach out to steady her, when she slapped his hand away. “I’m good.” Her voice was less even than she had intended it to be.

With his free hand, Elias gripped her arm and softly said, “Tillie, you don’t have to prove anything.”

He felt her muscles tense and was certain she was going to shake off the contact. Then there was a sudden change. She relaxed and, in the pale white light from the lantern, he saw her smile at him.

“You’re right. I don’t. That isn’t the deal, anyway.”