The Red Quarry #2
A door stuck because the frame had swollen. A ceiling tile had collapsed beneath an old leak. Darren found a cabinet full of expired sanitizer and announced their retirement plans.
Noah carried cases, held measuring tapes, and wrote down whatever Rina told him. The boots made his steps heavy, but he did not complain.
Mara began to think the animal-contact notice belonged to an earlier phase of the property.
Then Rina opened an electrical room and stopped.
“What?” Mara asked.
“The lower control bus is energized.”
Bell remained in the doorway.
“The site operates in standby.”
“This isn’t standby.”
Rina pointed to the indicator lights.
“Vent dampers. Magnetic locks. Feed motors. Sector actuators.”
Noah looked at Bell.
“Feed motors for the polymers?”
Bell ignored him.
A laminated diagram covered one wall.
Several sections were identified by names:
NURSERYRUN ARUN BMATERNAL HOLDINGSLAUGHTER TRANSFER
Darren read the final label.
“Were they processing food?”
“No,” Bell said.
Jules leaned closer to the diagram.
“Then what was transferred to slaughter?”
“Laboratory animals are euthanized after research.”
“Usually not on an industrial rail.”
A red warning lamp blinked beside SUBLEVEL C.
Mara pointed.
“What’s that?”
“Door or sensor fault,” Rina said.
She opened the lower panel.
Most of the wiring was filmed with dust. One relay had been replaced recently.
“Somebody serviced this.”
Bell nodded.
“A maintenance team inspected critical systems before the asset sale.”
“When?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“Names?”
“I can retrieve the report when we have a connection.”
“Are they available by satellite?”
Bell hesitated.
“I don’t know.”
A faint impact traveled through the wall.
Everyone stopped.
It came again.
Metal striking metal somewhere below them.
Darren smiled.
“There’s our maintenance team.”
Bell checked her tablet.
“No personnel are registered on site.”
Noah said, “Maybe they took their badges off.”
The impact repeated.
Then came a long scrape.
Mara looked at Rina.
“Could that be a door cycling?”
“Possibly.”
“Do we need to check it?”
“I need the main control room either way. I’m not sleeping above active feed and containment systems I haven’t inspected.”
Bell looked toward the darkening windows.
“Operations is below the west service corridor.”
“How long?” Mara asked.
“Twenty minutes if the system makes sense,” Rina said.
“And if it doesn’t?”
“We stop pretending this is a normal building.”
Mara looked at Noah.
“You stay in administration with Jules.”
His expression changed immediately.
“No.”
“It’s an electrical inspection.”
“I can carry equipment.”
“You can do that up here.”
“You said I’d get site hours.”
“When the work matches your training.”
“You brought me to a condemned biotech quarry to move cases?”
Darren picked up his laser measure.
“He can come with me. I need loading-bay dimensions.”
Mara turned.
“No one splits up.”
Noah gave a humorless smile.
“So I’m unsafe alone but useless with you.”
Rina handed him her equipment case.
“You carry this. You do not touch anything with wires. That solves two problems badly enough for everyone.”
Mara wanted to object.
The metal impact came again beneath the floor.
She nodded.
The west corridor sloped into the quarry wall.
Carpet gave way to concrete. Pipes crowded the ceiling. Steel doors divided the passage every twenty feet.
Their badges opened each door in sequence.
The first released immediately.
The second required them to wait until the door behind had closed.
By the fourth, Noah was watching the locking bolts rather than the corridor ahead.
“Airlock.”
“Pressure separation,” Rina said.
“For birds?”
Rina looked at Bell.
Bell kept walking.
A long observation window ran beside the next section.
Darkness lay beyond it.
Darren aimed his flashlight through the glass.
The beam revealed a concrete chamber several feet below them. Metal rails divided it into narrow lanes. Each lane led toward a doorway in the far wall.
Hooks hung from an overhead track.
Brown stains marked the floor.
Jules crouched near the glass.
“That isn’t rust.”
Bell said, “You can’t determine that visually.”
Jules moved the flashlight.
Dark arcs reached nearly six feet up the wall.
“Rust doesn’t spray.”
Noah stood close to the window.
Mara touched his shoulder.
“Keep moving.”
He did.
The corridor divided ahead.
OPERATIONS pointed left.
HANDLING AND TRANSFER pointed right.
Another impact came from the right passage.
This one was close.
A red light flashed above a heavy insulated door.
Bell’s tablet chimed.
“Transfer access nine,” she said. “Door obstruction.”
The door shuddered.
Something on the other side made a short, wet snorting sound.
Darren raised his phone.
Mara said, “Put that away.”
“Documentation.”
“You’re filming vertically.”
He lowered it but did not pocket it.
Rina connected a handheld diagnostic unit to the wall panel.
“Interior pressure is normal. Temperature is twenty-seven Celsius.”
“Warm for an empty room,” Jules said.
“Motion sensor isn’t responding.”
The door shook again.
A dark line extended beneath the lower seal.
Jules aimed her flashlight at it.
Blood had dried in a thin fan across the concrete.
A fly moved along the edge.
Bell stepped back.
“We should return to administration.”
Darren stared at the door.
“You know what’s in there.”
“No.”
“You’re acting like you do.”
“I am acting like there is blood beneath a damaged containment door.”
The inspection window had fogged from the inside.
A small clear circle appeared in the condensation.
Something had wiped it away.
An eye moved into view.
Yellow-brown.
The pupil narrowed under Darren’s light.
A translucent membrane crossed it sideways.
Noah moved backward so quickly that Rina’s case struck his leg.
The head pressed closer to the glass.
Dark feathers or filaments lay flat along the snout. Pebbled skin showed beneath them. When the mouth opened, Mara saw small serrated teeth.
The animal breathed against the window.
Condensation covered it again.
Bell dropped her tablet.
The animal hit the door.
Dust fell from the ceiling.
A barking call came through the lower seal.
Another answered from deeper inside the chamber.
Noah whispered, “There’s more than one.”
The corridor lights changed from white to red.
A calm voice spoke overhead.
“Handling sequence resumed.”
Rina looked at her diagnostic screen.
“I didn’t activate anything.”
The red light above the door turned green.
Locking bolts began retracting around the frame.
Mara heard each one release.
“Move.”
The final bolt disengaged.
The door jumped outward.
A narrow snout forced itself through the gap.
A feathered forelimb followed, ending in three black claws.
Darren ran first.
Mara shoved Noah toward the junction.
Behind them, metal screamed as the animal pulled against the door.
They reached the operations entrance.
It had locked.
Rina pressed her badge to the panel.
The indicator remained red.
“Open it,” Darren shouted.
“It’s sequencing.”
The animal emerged from the transfer corridor.
It stood almost as high as Mara at the hip. Its body leaned forward over long, powerful legs, balanced by a rigid tail. Dark feathers covered its back and forelimbs. One raised foot carried a curved claw as long as Mara’s hand.
Darren lifted his phone again.
“Is that a dinosaur?”
The animal charged.
Noah tore a fire extinguisher from the wall.
Mara reached for him.
He pulled the pin and discharged it down the corridor.
White powder swallowed the animal.
It shrieked.
Rina struck the control panel with the heel of her hand.
The indicator turned green.
The operations door opened several inches.
Darren forced himself through first.
Jules followed.
Bell tried to squeeze in beside her and jammed them both in the opening.
“Back up,” Mara shouted.
Rina dragged Bell inside.
The dinosaur burst from the extinguisher cloud.
Powder covered its feathers. Saliva hung between its teeth.
Noah swung the metal cylinder.
It struck the side of the animal’s snout.
The dinosaur recoiled.
Mara grabbed Noah’s vest and pulled him toward the door.
His left boot folded beneath him.
He fell.
The dinosaur lunged.
Its jaws closed around the extinguisher instead of Noah’s neck.
Teeth punctured the casing.
The cylinder ruptured with a violent hiss.
The animal twisted away.
Noah crawled toward Mara.
She caught his wrists.
Rina held the door from inside.
“Come on.”
Mara pulled.
Noah’s left boot slipped from his heel.
The electrical-cord lace caught against the lower track.
Darren reached through and grabbed Noah beneath one arm.
Together they dragged him across the threshold.
Mara followed.
Rina hit the close switch.
The steel door began sliding shut.
The dinosaur struck it before the gap narrowed.
Its head and one forelimb entered operations.
The door closed against its neck.
The animal screamed.
Its claw swept across the floor.
Darren jumped backward.
The curved toe caught him behind the ankle.
It sliced through his work pants, skin, and tendon.
He fell face-first.
The dinosaur pulled.
Darren’s chin struck the concrete.
Jules caught his wrists.
Mara grabbed the back of his vest.
Noah seized his belt.
The animal jerked again.
Darren’s injured leg disappeared through the gap to the knee.
“Reverse it,” Jules shouted.
Rina stood over the controls.
“If I open the door, the whole animal comes through.”
“It has him.”
Darren twisted onto his back.
“Get it off me.”
His voice had become high and breathless.
Through the narrowing opening, Mara saw the dinosaur brace one foot against the opposite wall.
Its jaws closed around Darren’s calf.
The muscle flattened between its teeth.
Darren screamed.
They pulled together.
For a moment, he moved toward them.
The dinosaur shook its head.
Darren’s knee bent sideways.
Bone broke through the fabric.
Noah shouted and pulled harder.
The dinosaur planted its sickle claw high in Darren’s thigh.
The point disappeared into him.
It dragged downward.
The leg opened from thigh to knee.
Blood struck the wall and sprayed through the doorway.
Jules lost her grip.
Darren slid backward.
The door caught him across the hips.