Raven, too tired to speak, merely nodded.
“Can’t just chuck ’em down the hole. Too far. They’ll burst apart.” Lark started untying the cord on her cart.
“Where’s the tunnel to the big door? Can probably roll the carts straight in there,” said Trenton.
“Hah. Noah won’t let us open that. And it probably doesn’t work.” Shaw pulled at the cord on his cart. “And these carts aren’t going to go down stairs any better than they would a ladder.”
“There’s a backup, but it’s kind of a one-use-only situation involving counterweights.” Raven finished off her last water bottle, drinking it all in one go.
Lark tugged her filter mask down. “Damn. Can’t breathe in this thing. Another problem going in the big door is no one’s allowed on level one.”
“Anyone know why?” asked Raven.
The others all shrugged.
“Let’s go eat first. Then we can figure out how to get the filters inside.” Trenton patted his stomach.
“What if it starts raining?” Raven yanked the tie down cord off her cart. “Or that creature comes by and eats them.”
“Left them alone long enough in that place we found them.” Shaw spat to the side.
“Might not have known about it. It followed us there.” Raven eyed the cord. “These are light. Tie a couple packs together and we can lower them down. Someone stays at the bottom to untie the bundles so we can pull the rope back up. We’ve got well more than 120 feet of rope here.”
“Sounds good.” Shaw nodded.
They spent the next hour or so lowering filters into the shaft three and four bundles at a time. Tinsley ran inside to get food for everyone, but came back with Sienna—carrying a big tray of cooked vegetables—and the other kids. Raven kept her head down, accepting her ‘sister’s’ anger at scaring the hell out of her. It didn’t even occur to either of them that Sienna had gone to the surface to yell at her without the slightest hesitation. When she finally realized she stood under the open sky, Sienna went speechless and gawked at the orange-indigo sunset above the ruins.
The other kids didn’t go up the ladder. They helped move filters around in the corridor, carrying them off to the engineering room. Raven wondered how they got past the security team. Maybe Shaw telling Jose earlier in the day that outside air had been leaking into the corridor for years spooked them enough to stay away.
Eventually, all the filters made it into the Arc. The flatbed carts could neither fit through the hatch nor did anyone feel the need to suffer the grueling task of trying to lower such heavy things by a thin cord. They’d sit outside until or unless needed again for some other purpose.
The great scavenging expedition done, the team went inside, Raven last. She lingered half out of the hatch for a moment, gazing at the last traces of sunlight disappearing in the west. The idea that they’d been relying on the farm for oxygen already and the CO2 scrubbers basically did nothing paradoxically eased her nerves. Maybe with clean filters, conditions inside would improve somewhat. She doubted Ben had the balls to turn the scrubbers off to ease the stress on the power system. But, if the two sagging turbine towers gave out, they’d have no choice.
Raven heaved a resigned sigh and climbed down. She almost left the hatch open for air, but out of concern ‘Chewie’ might find it and be dangerous, she sealed the entrance and went inside. Sienna took the kids back to her quarters while Raven and the other techs rushed to replace all the filter inserts in the main unit as fast as possible. The off-the-shelf filters closest in size ended up being a little too small, but the team had plenty of scrap foam to fill in the gaps to force air through the membranes.
Once they finished installing the filters, Raven spent a few hours at Sienna’s quarters explaining everything while the kids played a board game on the rug in front of the couch. Josh, Cheyenne, Xan, and Ariana couldn’t believe Tinsley had been brave enough to go outside. That they’d come back alive shocked them even more.
Sienna cycled from periods of crying out of sheer frustrated worry to clinging to yelling to laughing. As soon as Raven brought up the pigeons, her best friend turned back into the thirteen-year-old who used to annoy the entire class by asking so many questions. The girl who adored learning had become the woman doing the teaching.
Eventually, she and Tinsley returned to their room, showered off the grime from a full day working outside, and went to sleep.
The next wake started as normal as most others with one crucial difference: hope.
Raven took Tinsley to the cafeteria and ate breakfast with Sienna and the other kids. Once they finished eating, the children followed Sienna to the classroom while Raven headed to the engineering room. Everyone pretty much expected the first bank of filters would need to be changed within twenty-four hours as they soaked up the brunt of the crud floating around the system. Raven thought it odd to have so many filters in a line like that, but figured that the original design used different types of filters, starting with screens to trap big pieces of debris, progressing down to finer and finer ones. Somewhere along the line, the techs started cramming the same filter panels in every slot.
Probably after all the real engineers died—or left.
The team assembled in the work room for a meeting with Ben to toss around ideas for how best to clean the vents without setting off dust-mageddon and flooding the Arc with contamination. Raven kept offering ‘vent in outside air’ as a solution for their inability to shut down airflow to different areas long enough to scrape out the ductwork.
Once Lark seconded the idea, Ben went off on a ramble about how Noah would never agree to that. In the midst of his yelling—far more frustrated at the situation than angry at his team—a floor-shaking boom came from the adjacent chamber, followed by a startlingly loud warning buzzer.
Shit, the scrubbers exploded! Raven leapt off her worktable where she’d been sitting and ran with the others to the doorway.
Sparks and smoke rose from the enormous Zeus fan enclosure. After a few seconds of shocked staring, Raven realized the machine made the scariest sound she’d ever heard: total silence. The heart of air flow in the Arc had stopped beating. Small distributed fans all throughout the ventilation system still operated, but they wouldn’t be enough to keep people alive, only extend the amount of time it took for everyone to suffocate. The enormous fan could not be allowed to die.
“Shit,” said Ben. “That’s a problem.”
Without another word—or even picking on the boss for saying something so stupid—the team all pounced on the machinery. Ben ran to get the rest of the team, who normally worked during the other wake while Raven slept. Raj, Peter, and Neal—all a bit groggy from being dragged out of bed—scrambled in to help with the crisis. In short order, the team identified the problem as a failure of the drive chain brought on by an excessive buildup of gunk on the enormous fan. As soon as the drive chain snapped, the motor’s RPMs redlined due to having no load, blowing it out in mere seconds. The governor that should have cut power under a runaway situation didn’t even have a chance to kick in before the ancient motor cooked itself.
Trenton worked with Lark to repair the drive chain. Raven, Peter, and Shaw rebuilt the guts of the massive electric motor, one of a few things in the Arc they still had legit spare parts for. Raj and Neal checked melted wiring. Ben took the opportunity of a shutdown to clean crud off the big fan.
Once everyone felt they’d done as much as possible, the team crowded around Ben, holding their breath as he reached for the big yellow button.
Twenty-six minutes after it exploded, Zeus returned to life.
The team collapsed to sit on the floor, sharing a moment of silent thanks. The off-hours crew dragged themselves out, heading back to bed.
Trenton chugged water, then gasped. “We knocked a whole bunch of shit loose cleaning the filters a couple wakes ago. Most of it probably stuck to the big fan.”
“Damn, I could really use a hit of vodka,” muttered Shaw.
&nb
sp; “Didn’t we run out of that?” Ben looked over at him.
“We did. Shaw drank it all.” Trenton smiled.
Shaw overacted a frown. “Damn bureaucrats. They figure we need potatoes for eating more than booze.”
Lark chuckled. “The nerve.”
“Wow. Too close.” Ben patted the Zeus cabinet. “Sorry big guy. I know we really ought to shut you down for maintenance once a month, but the air’s so thin we can’t afford it.”
“We can’t afford Zeus blowing up either.” Raven stood, thrusting her arm out at the big fan. “If we don’t do the routine maintenance, it’s going to blow up again. Do you realize what you just said? Things are so bad we can’t risk turning it off even for an hour? That is not normal. It’s going to fail again, then what?”
Ben, and the others, stared at her.
“We could rip ductwork out of level six and fabricate an air intake leading from the surface,” said Lark. “Need to figure out an exhaust path, too.”
“Break away the ceiling in the shaft. Make it wide enough for two separate duct paths.” Raven traced a ‘drawing’ in midair. “Unless we get the okay to open the main door, then we can use the entire escape shaft as a duct.”
Groaning, Ben face-palmed. “He’s never going to let us do that.”
Raven seethed, furious at the group who decided to pick up and leave, taking with them all the scientists and experts. Even if that hadn’t really happened, she pretended it did so she could be furious at them for abandoning the rest to die in a decaying tomb. That anyone remained alive in here after so long should have impressed her, but it ended up making her angrier. Maybe she should be furious at the people who decided to stay instead. Having seen no sign of a settlement on the surface, it remained unclear if, in fact, most of the Arc’s population left years ago. If they had, a total lack of their presence topside suggested things hadn’t gone as they’d hoped.
Unless they feared attack and went far away. Or, that’s just a bad theory that sounds good and something killed everyone. Something on level one? Maybe all the scientists and stuff died because they tried to do an experiment of some kind and it went very wrong.
“Screw it.” Raven jumped to her feet and stormed toward the door.
“What sort of trouble are you about to cause?” called Ben.
“I’m going to drag Noah to the surface.”
“Oh, shit,” muttered Shaw. “She’s serious, too.”
Ben scrambled after her, jogging to catch up in the hallway. “Can you try something less violent first?”
“We’ll see how it goes,” said Raven, not slowing her stride.
Once again, she barged into Noah’s office. He nearly jumped out of his chair at the sudden bang of the door hitting the wall. Preston, seated in front of the desk with his back to her, yelped and grabbed his chest. She rushed up to them, pointed at Noah, and said, “Zeus died.”
What little color the big boss had in his cheeks faded.
“Momentarily died.” Ben ran up behind her, grasping her shoulders as if to collect a runaway toddler. “We repaired it. Amazing team. Clockwork.”
Noah slouched, hand to his forehead, almost glaring at Raven for scaring him.
“Good. That shocked you.” She folded her arms. “What’s going to happen the next time Zeus decides to blow up and we don’t have the right parts to fix it? And before you say anything, it will blow up again. Look at the facts right in front of you. Everything in here is at least 300 years old, probably older. All of our machinery has been repaired and rebuilt so many times none of it looks anything like the design schematics anymore. Even our damn toilets are jury rigged. The scrubbers are worthless, every fan motor in the vent system is on its last legs, and one fat pigeon landing in the wrong place is going to topple a tower and destroy our electrical power generation.”
“To be technically accurate, the scrubbers are not worthless.” Ben managed a cheesy smile. “They’re operating at four percent efficiency.”
Preston muffled a snicker. “Clearly you’re drawing a fine line between functionally worthless and literally worthless.”
Noah glanced at Preston, at the giant book in front of him which appeared to be a medical textbook, then up at Raven. “Do you have any good news, or did you come here to inform me we are doomed?”
“There are two things we can do to stop everyone in the Arc from dying. 183 people do not deserve to die because you’re convinced old stories are true.”
“182,” said Preston in a somber tone. “Daniel passed away several hours ago.”
“Aww, damn.” Raven bowed her head. “He was such a nice guy.”
“I’ve got him in a cooler for now. If you want to say your respects, you can.” Preston gave Noah side eye. “We are concerned about cremating him due to the effects it would have on the air. My testing suggests levels of certain toxins are accumulating, and CO2 is approaching danger levels.”
Raven snapped her head up, fixing Noah with a steely glare. “Do you believe it coming from the doc?”
“What are your two ideas?” asked Noah, his voice as calm as if they discussed what to have for lunch.
“Either we slap together a series of ducts and fans to ventilate the Arc with outside air, or we… leave.”
Preston gasped. Ben did a double take at her. Noah raised both eyebrows.
“Did you just say ‘leave’ the Arc?” whispered Ben, eyelids fluttering.
“Yes.” She smirked at him. “I’ve been outside multiple times now for long periods. It’s so obvious how much better I feel breathing up there compared to in here. It’s like I’m suffocating in slow motion.”
“That’s rather drastic.” Noah gave a weak chuckle. “We cannot simply go outside with no destination.”
Raven gestured at the ceiling. “Yeah, we can. We don’t have to go anywhere but outside. Build a settlement right above us. We already have the turbines for electricity, the wells down on level six for water. We’ve got food from the hydroponics farm until those guys get a new farm growing outside in natural soil. I’m not saying we go trekking across the Earth, just out into fresh air.”
“Umm…” Preston held up a ‘wait a moment’ finger. “Before we could eat anything grown out there, I’d like to test the soil for contamination.”
“Plants are all over the place.” She nodded at the door. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”
“Existing plants don’t prove that they’re not drawing contamination from the ground,” said Preston. “They might look fine, but they could be toxic. Plants do have a habit of drawing contamination up into themselves.”
“All right. That’s true. But we still have the farm here. The ventilation system, especially if we pump outside air down here, would be enough to keep the workers safe if everyone else lived outside.” Raven paced. “This entire Arc is falling apart. Zeus blew up today. It’s going to blow up again, and I don’t think we should be down here when it does.”
Noah shifted in his seat. “Miss Wilder, there are things going on you’re unaware of.”
“No kidding.” She shifted her weight onto her right leg, hands on her hips. “Wanna fill me in then?”
“You aren’t leaving me much choice.” He tapped on his desk, evidently still debating with himself if he should speak more.
“I appreciate you not being a despot and just tossing me in jail.”
He smiled. “You’re too valuable as a tech. All right. Listen to me carefully and know that what I’m about to tell you is not intended as public knowledge.”
Too valuable as a tech… is that why he let Dad slide? Raven raised an eyebrow.
“I am aware that there is a group of ferals living in the area on the surface. Up until quite recently, we had a small team of technicians who worked primarily on the surface. We have lost contact with the volunteers.”
“The Saints,” said Raven.
Noah twitched, then eyed Preston.
“That’s why you let me go out there to fix the turbine
.” She looked at Ben, who appeared genuinely shocked to see Noah admit to the existence of people outside, even if they had come from the Arc. “Did they live on level one?”
“No, they did not. And yes, the Saints. They lived on the surface.” Noah frowned off to the side. “A jammed windmill would normally have been fixed by them in minutes.”
Ben exhaled hard, lips fluttering. “Dammit. I’d been seeing windmills go offline and come back on their own so long I started to wonder if the voltage sensors were faulty.”
“I believe these ferals that the Saints observed are far from harmless.”
Raven rubbed her forehead. “Why the secrecy about them? Why the fake death?”
“It is still deadly out there and we decided it best if the residents did not mistakenly believe it possible to live on the surface without consequence. Also, I am concerned regarding exposure to unknown pathogens. I couldn’t have them bringing diseases down here that we have no resistance to. We are humanity’s last hope.”
“Yet you let me, us, go outside and come back…”
Noah rested his chin in his hand, two fingers against his temple. “As you have so exhaustively pointed out, our systems are failing and we did not have the time to do things the right way. All four Saints disappeared without a word, I presume at the hand of the ferals. They have been harassing the windmills for some time, likely mistaking them for beasts they can kill and eat.”
“If the Saints aren’t on level one, why is it banned?” Raven looked back and forth between the doc and Noah. “Is it a giant morgue because like 1,700 people dropped dead of some mysterious reason a hundred years ago?”
Preston blinked. “Where the heck did you get that idea from?”
“No.” Noah bowed his head. “Since I am bringing you into the loop on the most secure information in the Arc, you may as well have the entire story before you do something that will kill people. Level one is off limits due to contamination from radioactive cesium.”
Raven tilted her head. “Are you serious? I didn’t think we had a nuclear power plant.”
The Girl Who Found the Sun Page 23