V
Nick watched the girl in admiration. She'd managed to awaken hope in him too, to give him some kind of purpose.
He liked this girl of quick and sharp mind.
And she knew how to speak. He had to admit he wouldn't have managed to present the facts of their current situation that way.
He wouldn't have managed to say so little about the horror of it and so much about a possible restart.
Those were ideals in the right place, and he was glad that, by a twist of fate, he'd ended up with her on the upper floors.
Which brought him back to reality. Inventory.
The warehouses. The locked gates on the floors.
He looked at the reddish lamps glowing dimly.
First and foremost, he had to sort out the power so he could unlock the warehouses.
Because ideas are useless if there's nothing to eat and drink.
"Tomi…" He lifted his gaze from one of the screens and looked at him questioningly. "Where does this power come from?" Nick pointed at the lamps and the running machines.
Tomi adjusted his glasses on his nose and scratched his head.
"Well, I'd say it's all located somewhere below us. There has to be a maintenance section somewhere. Wait!" he exclaimed and ran toward the depths of the room. He came back with a sheet of paper bearing a blueprint of the entire shelter. "Here, here's the blueprint."
The two of them leaned in to read, in the room's faint light, the confusing markings on the paper. According to the blueprint, the shelter had seven floors. Nick began to explain, which interested Nika, who joined them.
"We're here," he pointed to a spot on the blueprint. "These three are warehouses. On the fourth was the party, and that's where everyone is for now. Everything's protected by electronic locks that require full power to open."
"Can the gate be forced?" Tomi asked.
"Well, it probably could be, but not with our tools. It's made of some special alloy that can withstand great pressure and strain. That's what the higher-ups claimed to potential renters of the warehouse space, at least."
"So we can't get to the people, nor they to us," the girl stated, and Nick nodded.
"That's the current situation," he went on pointing at the blueprint.
"The floor below was used as a laboratory for some research. I know they spent quite a while renovating it, and it was the only space intended for sale that I didn't have access to," Nick pointed on the blueprint.
"You can reach the laboratory by a staircase blocked by the same kind of gate, and I don't even have a card that would unlock it."
"It looks massive," Nika noted, studying the blueprint. "By this it looks at least three times bigger than the largest warehouse space. And you say it was renovated?" she looked at Nick.
"Yes, for weeks they hauled equipment and all sorts of things down by elevator. I know there was a lot of grumbling about not being able to use the freight elevator."
"You say there was a lot of equipment?" Nika asked.
"Yes, whole heaps. Computers and the like. A lot of glass."
"So how did they get it down to the fifth floor? The staircase is circular and not suited to transporting sensitive tech, especially glass parts. A logistical nightmare," she looked at him.
Nick furrowed his brows.
"Look, that's true… it never even crossed my mind…" He kept frowning, thinking.
Nika went back to the blueprint and pointed somewhere on the fourth floor.
"That means there's some other elevator or access to the lower floor somewhere."
"But that's not marked on this blueprint," Nick objected. She looked at him calmly.
"This elevator isn't marked on the blueprint either," she pointed to the elevator behind them.
"Look, it says security blueprint of the facility. So this was meant for security personnel with lower clearance. Or clearance only up to the sixth level," she pointed to it on the blueprint, next to which was written 'Residential Block.'
Nick understood. On the blueprint the seventh section was blacked out, because it wasn't the same security level. Or so, at least, thought those who built this complex. The communists and their secrets.
"Then below us we have several more blacked-out levels that security from this level has no access to. Let's hope this elevator behind us can provide more answers," Tomi stated.
"What do you mean?" Nika looked at him.
"Well, if I were a communist bigwig and a man full of power, would I go down there by an ordinary freight elevator, or would I have an elevator of my own that takes me straight to my place, from where I run the whole process?"
There was logic in that, Nick thought. "Let's assume Tomi is right and that we'll find at least some of the answers when we go down in the elevator."
He headed toward the elevator, which still waited with its doors flung open for passengers.
Nick laughed. "Besides, what do we have to lose?"
He cheerfully stepped into the elevator.
Nika shrugged and joined him, while Tomi hesitated a little, but didn't want to be left alone in the room's half-light.
He entered the elevator and the doors closed.
In the cramped space there was just enough room for the three of them, and there was only one keypad with two buttons.
In greasy, thick letters beside them was written Down and Up.
There were no other buttons, and Nick pressed the one marked Down.
With the screech of a motor that hadn't run in a long time and slight jolts of the whole elevator, they felt a gentle drop as the elevator began to descend.
Nick whistled the tune that was always in his head in elevators, and the other two looked at him in surprise.
Seeing them looking, he stopped whistling and blushed.
"Habit…" he explained.
He got no answer, and the three of them waited patiently until, finally, a minute or two later, the elevator stopped and the doors, with a whine, began to open.
Complete darkness greeted them as the doors opened, and they stood there a moment, waiting for lights to come on somewhere, but that didn't happen.
So Nick, after a while, guided by logic, reached his hand outside the elevator and felt along the walls in search of something.
And he was rewarded — his fingers felt the familiar material of the handle that on the upper floors served to switch on the main power.
Nick pulled the handle hard, and to his surprise it slid smoothly into place with a click, and lights began flickering on around them.
The first thing they saw was a large, dusty reception desk that had long gone out of fashion, but at the time the shelter was built had been the pinnacle of design and workmanship.
Stepping out of the elevator, one couldn't help noticing how intuitively the desk was placed, and how it was probably where further assignments or explanations were given.
To the left was a huge mosaic with a motif of the open sea and a lonely sailboat, while to the right were technical drawings and the inevitable pictures of Tito and the Party.
Here and there, tastefully placed oak cabinets with files, but they gaped empty or held the odd folder carelessly tossed onto a shelf.
Behind the desk, two metal ramps. The left led toward a wide passage above which was written "Staff," while the passage on the right bore the sign "Management."
Nick noticed there was no dim reddish light here; instead the neon tubes glowed brightly and clearly lit the space and the corridors.
He set off to explore the right corridor but stopped at the ramp.
"Tomi, you take the left passage and I'll take the right. That way we'll cover more ground in less time."
Tomi nodded, but he didn't feel like exploring alone a space that hadn't been used in decades and could hold who knows what, so he suggested:
"Nick…" the man looked at him questioningly. "In horror films they always split up and always start dying one by one — better we stay together. Besides, how would we communicate, and someone could get lost."
Nick started to object, but realized it wasn't smart to explore an unknown part of the shelter alone, and he saw the logic in Tomi's words.
Nika didn't object much; she was examining the wall mosaic and wondering how much effort had gone into making it, only for no one to have admired it in decades. She turned to them:
"What are we waiting for, shall we go?" she asked, and set off down the right passage.
The passage was about three meters wide and roughly two and a half high.
You could comfortably carry furniture or materials or whatever through it.
It led some hundred meters into the depths, and the only things that broke the emptiness of the corridor were the occasional doors or the odd picture hanging on the side.
Nick approached the first door and opened it.
A living room with outdated furniture greeted him, all covered with clear plastic.
A large sofa graced the center of the living room, facing the wall where a covered old-fashioned television stood.
On both sides were bookshelves that now, under the plastic, gaped empty.
Above the television hung a large five-pointed star glowing a dull red.
Never-used armchairs beside the sofa, and behind them was the kitchen counter.
An open-plan kitchen, economically arranged with a small oven and a sink.
The most impressive part of the kitchen was an oval-shaped fridge that took up perhaps even too much space in such a small kitchen.
All made of stainless steel, it gleamed, waiting for the day someone would use the space.
Nick opened the fridge. It was plugged in and humming quietly.
A musty but cold air blew into his face from the freezer.
Nika was just coming out of the small bathroom with a smile. Nick looked at her questioningly.
"There's a shower with hot water! And the towels are perfectly dry and ready under the plastic." She smiled.
"Hot water? Did we turn that on?"
"No…" Nika corrected him, "…the water ran hot right away, it didn't even heat up, and there wasn't much corrosion either. If it had been heated, it wouldn't have warmed up so fast."
"I wouldn't say someone left the water heaters on for decades — they'd have burned out after a couple of years," Tomi scratched his head.