The Ghost Mine Page 11

  Even though he knew security would know he was in there, Justin tried it. Frankly, this was probably something security ought to handle anyway, and if they showed up, then he could leave it alone.

  But the screen didn’t respond, not even with a negative tone. Dead, just like the vending machine.

  He squinted at it, then he looked around the room for cameras. He didn’t see any—though that didn’t mean they weren’t around, even if security hadn’t seen him last night.

  Justin shifted his focus to the door. If he could work his fingers into the crack then perhaps he could pull it open. He tried, and with a bit of effort, the door slid open wide enough to get through.

  Technically, he was breaking protocol just by entering the decontamination showers without his safety gear on, but he couldn’t see that it mattered much. They hadn’t struck copalion yet, nor had he heard a single Geiger counter click since they’d arrived. Besides, he’d gone through the showers last night with no ill effects.

  As he pursued the light through the buffer zones, Justin realized the light was heading for the passageway that connected to the mine as it had the night before. Like the door to the showers, the door leading into the passageway was cracked open.

  Would he find the light inside the mine itself again? If he did, would he enter the mine?

  Yeah, he probably would.

  He followed the light into the passageway, but it remained ahead of him. Sure enough, the vault-like door to the mine hung open, and the green light shined from within the mine.

  There’s a difference between going inside and just taking a look.

  Justin abandoned his concerns and headed toward the mine door. As with the previous two doors, he had to pull it open, but this one weighed far more. He got a grip, leaned back, and pulled hard. The door inched farther open, but he could neither get through nor see inside.

  He pulled again, and the door opened more. After his third try, he managed to create enough of an opening for a peek.

  An olive-green robot stared up at him.

  Justin gasped and fell back. He landed on his butt and staggered backward, sucking in erratic breaths amid his pounding heartbeat. He expected some sort of verbal command to get away from the mine, but none came.

  Justin let a solid minute pass as he fought to calm his nerves, then he pushed himself up to his feet and crept over to the door. He peered inside the mine again and saw the robot parked there.

  It wasn’t much more than a boxy head mounted to a motionless apparatus with treads on its left and right sides. Two miniature cannons pointed up at him from either side of its head.

  It showed no indication of noticing him.

  He eased forward so his head cleared the opening, but the robot still didn’t move. No light emanated from it—though he didn’t know if any should to begin with—and it didn’t respond at all to his head poking beyond the door. Was it even on?

  Down the mine corridor, the green light continued to glow.

  Justin picked up a small, blue stone and tossed it at the robot.

  Clank. The stone bounced off of the robot’s head, chipped its olive-green paint, and skittered against the inner wall of the mine.

  But the robot didn’t move.

  Justin eased more of his body into the opening and checked the guard bot for a reaction. It gave none. Maybe it hadn’t been set up properly. Maybe its sensors had gone bad. Or maybe it would see him once he was more exposed. He didn’t want to get shot for being reckless—well, even more reckless, anyway.

  But the bot still didn’t indicate that it had seen him, nor did it give any sign of functionality, even when he bent down and waved his hand right in front of its “face.” Now, with his whole body exposed to it, he gained enough confidence to step over the threshold and inside the mine.

  The green light still glowed from around the curve of the mine’s outer passageway. Justin followed the light and encountered a second armed guard bot in the center of the passageway, this one also motionless and asleep, or deactivated, or whatever.

  Whatever the case, he probably wasn’t getting shot tonight.

  He passed a huge grav lift that led up to the mine’s loading docks at the surface. He’d been briefed on it in one of his training videos. A third bot faced the entrance to the grav lift, its guns pointed at it.

  Justin passed his own sector, number 13. Like the rest of them, Sector 13’s doors remained tightly sealed.

  The green light still moved ahead of him, its source always just out of sight. When he reached Sector 7, he saw the source of the light emanating from within the next sector—from Sector 6, the one ACM had closed, allegedly due to a cave-in.

  Maybe ACM had late-night crews working to clear it so they could reopen it and excavate more copalion. A simple answer, but the twinge in his gut told him that wasn’t the case.

  As Justin approached Sector 6, the green light poured through the person-wide opening between the sector’s massive metal doors, now partially open. The light’s source was in there.

  He wished he’d grabbed a hardhat, given that he was about to walk into a sector that had closed because of a cave-in, but if he turned back now, he might lose the source of the light.

  As he peered through the opening between the doors, the green light vanished. Other lights glowed inside the sector, blue like those throughout the rest of the mine and common areas, as if it were the middle of the workday. The low whir of turbines purred overhead.

  Weird. Justin squeezed through the doors and stepped inside.

  What he saw didn’t suggest any sort of cave-in, but rather a horrible accident of some sort. To his left lay a mound of rubble and glass, disconnected from the rest of the science office above it as if something had cut it clean off.

  As for the office itself, none of its glass remained intact. The ceiling of the science office was charred black, and from what he could tell, from below so were the consoles inside of it. A semi-circle of glass shards on the cavern floor framed what remained of the office.

  A section of the metal catwalk—a feature Justin’s sector didn’t yet have because of its comparatively small size—had dislodged from the rest of it. What remained of the catwalk still sat atop massive metal pillars. Corresponding ladders and stairs lay around it like fallen chess pieces.

  There was no easy way up there that he could see—not that he would’ve wanted to get up there anyway. He also noticed a platform even higher up, topped with a large mainframe terminal against the cavern wall. High above that, only about half of the blue work lights shined, casting deep wells of shadows throughout the cavern

  To his right, a freestanding bank of lockers, probably safety lockers like the ones in his own sector, either hung open or lay prostrate like sinners before an angry God, crushed almost flat, and dents, gashes, and other signs of trauma marked most of them.

  Lines streaked across the cavern’s walls, floor, and ceiling at random. Justin recognized them as cuts from a Purdonic laser, or maybe several, but their scattered arrangement made no sense to him. It looked as if someone had gone trigger-happy with one and fired it recklessly, or even randomly.

  In the center of the cavern, about a dozen older-model mechs lay on the ground like dead soldiers, some face-up, some facedown. One of them was missing an arm, and Justin found it lying nearby. The mechs explained the laser lines carved throughout the cavern, but why would ACM leave perfectly good equipment, albeit a few years old, lying around like this?

  The cavern floor confused Justin the most. Fissures and cracks spiderwebbed throughout the space, but blue boulders and rocks had filled all of them in with surprising precision, leaving very little space between them. No cave-in would’ve filled them in so well and left so little debris elsewhere.

  He approached one of them and crouched next to it. Some sort of dense, blue resin filled in even the smallest cracks between the rocks and sealed it all together. Yet the resin had cracked around the edges of the fissures and around some of the la
rger rocks. It either wasn’t completely sealed after all or the resin was wearing out.

  Cave-ins definitely didn’t produce resin, either. Someone had filled these crevices in with the rocks and then tried to seal them with the resin.

  But why? Maybe to prepare the sector to resume mining operations? And none of it suggested where the source of the green light had gone.

  Whatever the case, Justin knew one thing: this was no cave-in.

  A heavy thunk sounded, and the overhead lights went out. Darkness consumed the cavern.

  Justin stood up, his heart beating fast. Did someone know he was in there?

  Metal groaned behind him, and he turned toward the sector doors in time to see them bang shut.

  Did someone not know he was in there?

  Red warning lights flashed. His heart rate accelerated, and his breathing kept pace.

  A metallic clank sounded overhead, then another, then another. The whir of the turbines above him faded, then they stopped entirely. Justin swore.

  He darted through the red darkness to the terminal next to the doors, but it didn’t respond to his taps or commands. In the red emergency light, he found two laser cuts on the terminal—one horizontal and one vertical that veered right as it moved up. It was fried.

  Justin shifted back in front of the doors and tried to dig his fingers between the seams, but not even his fingernails fit between them. He slammed his fists on the doors. “Hey! Let me out of here!”

  An alarm blared around him, and a robotic voice stated, “This area is under containment protocol. This area is under containment protocol. This area…”

  Containment protocol? Sweat trickled down the sides of Justin’s head. Containment of what?

  Something hissed behind him. In the flashing red light, black gas plumed from the crevices—the same black gas he’d encountered at work earlier that day. Phichaloride. Fatal within seconds if he breathed it.

  Justin cursed.

  He ran toward the downed lockers and rummaged through the debris in search of anything he could use, either to force the door open or to protect his face. As he searched, the scent of burnt rubber hit his nostrils.

  The gas was already getting close to him.

  He darted around to the other side of the lockers and kept searching. An old-fashioned pickax lay on the ground nearby, but it wouldn’t do him any good if he couldn’t breathe. He moved to a locker door lying separate from its locker, pushed it aside, and found a filtration mask.

  A large crack ran horizontally across its transparent face shield, but it was better than nothing. He strapped it to his head, and the face shield shifted as he put it on. It didn’t fully seal to his face like it should’ve. With its integrity breached, the mask wouldn’t keep all the gas out, but it might buy him some time.

  Justin ran back to the doors, now four quadrants instead of two halves thanks to the crack in his filtration mask, and he pounded on the hard metal again.

  Who was he kidding? No one would hear him between the heavy, sealed door and the incessant alarm.

  I’m going to die in here.

  His gut panged with the realization, then a determined anger replaced it.

  The hell I am.

  He spun back around and headed for that old-fashioned pickax. He grabbed it and ran toward the door.

  Gas continued to billow out of the crevices.

  He reared back and swung the pick end of the pickax at the door with all his strength.

  The pick clanged against the door, and the impact shook Justin’s hands so hard, they hurt.

  Something clanked on the cavern floor next to his boot. He looked down and found the pickax’s head lying next to his foot. He’d broken the shaft in one swing. Worse still, the door showed no noticeable signs of damage.

  Justin swore again. Panic wracked his nerves, and indecision froze him in place.

  He looked up at the science office. Maybe if he could get up there somehow, he could go out the other door?

  Unlikely. The door up there doubtless had the same material makeup. Plus, with the intermittent light, he couldn’t see a way up there. Even if he could, it was at least fifty feet up. With the gas rising and his vertigo, he’d just as soon fall to his death as die from the gas.

  The smell of burnt rubber intensified in his mask. Way worse than when he’d encountered it in Sector 13. His nostrils and throat burned from the stench.

  “Help!” he yelled again, pointless as it was. He would die in there. He never should have followed that damned green light.

  Then his vision blurred. He blinked it away and tried to raise the pickax’s shaft to swing that at the door, but his arms felt heavy and weak.

  The paralysis had begun to set in.

  His arm muscles shuddered, and the tool gained twenty pounds in his hands. He let it drop to the cavern floor and instead tried to use it to brace himself in spite of his shaky legs. Fog clouded his mind.

  Justin’s lungs burned, and his legs gave out. His knees hit the ground, and he braced himself with his palm to the floor. His vision blurred, and he lost his grip on the pickax shaft. His chest hit the ground, then his face.

  He blinked, turned his head toward the door, and inhaled a shuddering breath. His eyes stung and watered, but he couldn’t find the strength to rub them.

  Justin blinked again, and a blur of green light filled his sight. It took on a vaguely human shape and approached him. He blinked again, and his vision clarified.

  A man, his body ablaze with wispy green light, stared down at him. A jagged scar ran along the right side of his face, and he wore miner’s clothing, all of it illuminated.

  “Help… me…” Justin wheezed.

  The man made of green light looked up, and three clunks sounded in rapid succession, followed by a low whir. Then he waved his hand in front of the sector’s doors, and they opened.

  Justin blinked a third time, and the man was gone. In his place stood two men in full safety gear flanked by a pair of medical androids.

  Justin blinked again, but this time his eyes stayed closed.

  11

  Justin opened his eyes. An expanse of white nothing filled his vision, and his eyes burned from the light. He closed them again. Darkness was better. Less harsh. Safe.

  But cold. He shivered.

  Was he dead?

  Voices jabbered around him, both rhythmic and disjointed at the same time. Words crystalized in his ears, but his mind couldn’t process them.

  He opened his eyes again, and a form emerged out of the white. A white cross divided its chrome face into four parts. Glowing white eyes stared down at him.

  If he was dead, then androids made it to the afterlife as well.

  Its robotic voice warbled something, but he couldn’t comprehend it.

  A brown face with vivid blue eyes moved into view. A man. Probably Indian in descent, but those blue eyes didn’t match the rest of him. Maybe they were contacts or the result of a cosmetic surgery or something.

  He wore white and had a bit of stubble on his dark chin and neck. He smiled at Justin and spoke, but his words made no sense.

  Then Justin’s cognition snapped into place, and the man’s words sharpened into accented English. “…be fine. You are in one of the medbay examination rooms. They also double as recovery rooms. I am Dr. Pradeep Handabi, the mining complex’s resident physician. We got you out of there just in time. Much longer and you would have succumbed to the phichaloride’s effects.”

  Justin blinked again. He tried to sit upright, but his aching muscles rebelled. He moaned, and the sound scraped against his throat.

  “Take it easy.” Dr. Handabi put his hand on Justin’s chest. “You do not need to go anywhere. We expect you to make a full recovery, but it could take a few days, if not more. Just rest, and allow us to do our work.”

  Something pinched in his crotch, and Justin winced. He looked down.

  Dr. Handabi shook his head. “I am sorry, but we had to insert a catheter.”


  Justin raised his eyebrows.

  “You have been unconscious for almost a day, now. We were preparing to insert a feeding tube just before you woke up, but I expect that will no longer be necessary. It is not a pleasant experience, either for you or for me.”

  Justin closed his eyes and sighed, and the warmth of his breath teased the outside of his mouth. He looked down again. A clear mask cupped his nose and mouth.

  “Of course we had to put you on oxygen as well for the sake of your lungs. And an IV in your arm for fluids.”

  Justin eyed his left arm. A tube extended out of it and snaked over to a clear bag of liquid hanging from a stainless steel rack.

  “As I said, you will be fine,” Dr. Handabi said. “I am told that your filtration mask was not functioning properly, but it did enough to keep you alive. You owe your survival to your quick thinking and resourcefulness.”

  Do I? The last thing Justin remembered before the men and androids pulled him free was the wispy form of someone glowing with green light. A man, dressed in mining clothes similar to what Justin had been wearing that night. An obvious scar on his face.

  Somehow, the gas hadn’t affected the man. And somehow, when the man had moved his arm, the sector doors opened.

  Dr. Handabi sent the androids away and pulled up a chair. “On the bright side, you get to spend some time with me. I am very much looking forward to getting to know you.”

  Justin blinked at him.

  “As you can imagine, I do not get a lot of visitors here. The mine has not been open for very long, and I am glad to say we have had only a few minor injuries thus far, and one that was more serious. It is pretty much just me and the androids, my physician assistants. That is, until you came along.”

  Justin grunted, but he couldn’t make his mouth talk. It wasn’t functioning well enough yet. His lips and tongue—even his teeth—felt sluggish.

  “First, I want to share with you some poetry I wrote. I minored in creative writing. It has always been a passion of mine, and with this medbay’s slow pace, I have plenty of time to hone my craft.”