Chapter 8 #2
“I… don’t think Marcus would ever expect me to come back here,” Darren said when the silence stretched as Aiden’s thoughts continued to spiral down. “But I’d rather be on the safe side, just in case.”
Aiden cut his gaze to Darren and nodded, the glasses he wasn’t used to seeing on the man distracting him for a moment. They looked good, complementing the shape of Darren’s face in a subtle yet effective way.
“Yeah, I agree,” he said belatedly and refocused on his tablet before his appreciation for Darren’s handsome features could make him hate himself even more than he already did.
Five minutes later, they had landed the shuttle and were trekking across the inhospitable terrain, fighting high weeds and prickly bush, tripping over stone and climbing over chucks of still-standing structures.
Upon finally reaching the area of the labs, Aiden was panting and drenched in sweat despite the chilly May temperature.
Things looked slightly different now that they were on the ground and didn’t have the aerial view, but they managed to identify the corridor they were after with the help of the blueprints on Aiden’s tablet and a holographic 3D map.
“Okay, this is where the elevator used to be,” Aiden said as he stopped in front of chunks of burned wall with steel bracing sticking out. He toed the rubble and glass clinked under his feet. “According to the plans, the emergency stairs were in an adjacent room, somewhere around here.”
“Yeah, I remember. I just need to…” Darren trailed off, wrinkling his nose as he slowly spun around and tried to orient himself.
Dragging his fingers through a partially intact section of rough wall, he paced ahead from where Aiden was standing near the metal bracing. A faraway look unfocused his eyes, stirring the indigo as he seemed to remember bits of his childhood and relive memories Aiden wanted to ask about but didn’t.
Or maybe couldn’t, because it wasn’t his place to ask.
And yet, Darren gave him the answers anyway.
“Sara and I weren’t allowed in the labs,” Darren said, nostalgia giving a mellowness to his tone, “but we used to sneak into this part of the palace in hopes of snatching an access card from one of the scientists so we could explore what was underground.”
Aiden balled his hands into fists as Darren stopped in front of a pile of rubble on the other end of the wall.
“Did you succeed?” he asked now that he’d been given the opening, his curiosity budding along with that voice which berated him whenever he found himself wanting to understand Darren better.
“Stealing a card? Yes. Getting past the bio-scanners? Not quite, which resulted in both of us being grounded.” Darren grinned, his smile carrying the same fondness his voice was.
“Whose idea was it?” Aiden found himself ask, wanting to keep that dreamy expression on Darren’s face for as long as he could.
He really shouldn’t have cared about any of this, shouldn’t have asked either, maybe shouldn’t have agreed to come with Darren in the first place.
But he simply couldn’t help it, holding his breath at each little thing Darren shared about his past. Those confessions and memories were a piece of the puzzle that made up who Darren was now, and Aiden realized as he watched Darren stare at the broken wall, that he wouldn’t be able to stop until he had them all.
“I think we both came up with it,” Darren said, thoughtful. His smile fell a heartbeat later and his eyes shifted from the rubble to something behind Aiden. “The stairs should be there. To the left of where you are standing.”
Aiden nodded and started shoving chucks of concrete out of the way, chasing away the truth he’d discovered about his obsession. Darren joined him and soon enough they found what they were looking for.
Compared to its surroundings, the area around the opening of the narrow passage looked more preserved, like someone had been here after the fire, cleaned it up and then scattered concrete and stone around it to make it blend in.
And it did, unless you were paying attention or searching for it specifically like he and Darren were.
“Do you think this was Marcus’ doing?” Aiden posed as they slipped into the tunnel and turned the tablet’s flashlight on.
The soles of their boots produced echoing thuds as they slowly descended the steep stairs, though Aiden tried not to worry about that needlessly.
They hadn’t encountered anyone so far, and besides, even if a patrol passed by, they wouldn’t be able to hear anything unless they were standing directly at the passage’s opening.
“Probably,” Darren tossed back, shrugging his wide shoulders.
“Yet he still went after you, which means he likely didn’t find anything here. Or…”
“Didn’t know what to look for,” Darren finished Aiden’s thought as they reached the end of the tunnel.
They’d passed two landings with a single door each, but Darren hadn’t even paused to inspect them, so whatever was hopefully waiting to be found, likely hid somewhere else.
This last sublevel also had a reinforced door, but Darren ignored it too, as if it wasn’t even there.
He crouched down and started tracing the rough stone wall to their right, squinting at it in concentration.
“What are you looking for?” Aiden asked, directing the light at the wall.
“There should be a… mechanism somewhere around here. It’s not easy to find and requires the right order of inputs…” Darren explained a little absent-mindedly, still focused on the stone.
It took about an hour of Darren feeling out some sort of a tracing pattern before the thick stone panel Aiden couldn’t even tell wasn’t part of the real wall slid up and revealed another, equally narrow stairway.
Darren flashed a quick smile, hooking a finger over his shoulder at the reinforced door. “Sublevel -3 is where the altenergy engine schematics and designs were kept in a secure vault. It’s likely Marcus thought that the rest would be here too, so he’d have had no reason to look further.”
“That doesn’t mean he didn’t,” Aiden pointed out, following Darren down the stairs.
“True. But Sublevels -4 and -5 were built later, and the entrance upstairs”—he brushed his knuckles along the smooth gray stone—“was coated in some kind of experimental paint that makes the wall indistinguishable from its surroundings. Stops scanners, too.”
Aiden wondered about it, a part of him regretting that they didn’t have time to examine the structure. So many things had been invented here, so many discoveries had been made, and the world didn’t even know about it. Still, the only one that mattered right now was Dr. Batbayar’s.
“Right. So scans wouldn’t have shown it,” Aiden summed up belatedly.
“Probably. Or maybe Marcus’ men just did a shitty job of sweeping the place.”
Or maybe Marcus had found the sublevels, that was a possibility too.
But he’d searched them and come out empty-handed just as Aiden and Darren were about to if the clues they counted on simply weren’t there.
Aiden tried not to worry about that outcome just yet, deciding he was going to believe that Marcus had simply missed the intricately hidden entrance.
Darren skipped Sublevel -4 altogether and led them to the one below.
The door’s security was disengaged, granting them access without the need to fumble with its mechanism, which neither confirmed nor denied the theory swimming in Aiden’s head.
It could’ve been left this way by the scientists after all, and not by Marcus.
Following pristine but dark corridors that resembled the one from Sara’s memory, they eventually stumbled upon Dr. Batbayar’s office.
An old-style whiteboard littered with formulas, calculations and diagrams spanned the width of two of the walls, while four screens, two empty folders and a single framed photo occupied her desk.
The overall orderly state of the room suggested that he and Darren were likely the first to make it down here after the fire, because if Marcus had beaten them to it, the place would either be messy or cleared of all research.
“Kesley, see if you can turn the computer on,” Darren said, then tilted his head at the door near the far end of the whiteboard. “I’ll check what’s in the back room.”
Folding himself under the desk, Aiden located the power adapter.
He took out the power supply extension Bea had provided and plugged it into his tablet and then powered on the computer.
The four screens came to life as he plopped into the scientist’s chair, and he used the hacking program Nyle had uploaded to his device to bypass the credentials’ check.
Once he had access, he began looking for any clues about Dr. Batbayar’s discovery, though his mind kept circling back to Darren and the distracted stares he’d let slip.
To the way his shoulders seemed even tenser than usual, how he’d looked upstairs when he’d been lost in a memory of his childhood while he stood in the middle of his ruined palace.
And it suddenly clicked, what Aiden had to do.
Wanted to do, despite not wanting to. His breathing turned erratic and his heart beat too fast, a wave of dizziness washing through him.
He thought back on that night in the mess hall where he’d saved Darren from a breakdown, relived it just like he did almost every time he slept.
He’d had no obligation, no reason to do it.
He shouldn’t have cared. But the darkness which lived in Darren…
it was so irresistible, so familiar and tempting, and Aiden was powerless against it, drawn to it like a moth to a candle.
He craved to see more of it, to unravel it piece by piece until all that was left of the man who’d shattered his world was only the raw, naked truth he didn’t want anyone to see.
Aiden took a deep breath and forced himself to focus back on his task. He managed and yet that frustratingly pleasant hum in him only grew, spreading anticipation and want outwards from his chest as he decided that this time he had to let Darren come apart, to break him and push him over the edge.
And when that happened, when Darren reached the bottom, Aiden would be there to catch him.