Stealing Silence

by E. A. Darl

  “Good work, Avalon, you are right. Makes sense, it’s a sealed facility. The grey blends in with the roof, from the sky unless you are a satellite and you are targeting the complex, it’s all one grey roof. Careful on the door. Check for door contacts first. Remember what I said.”

  “Mitch, I have been breaking into places like this for years.” Avalon could not keep the amusement out of her tone.

  “Yes, my dear, and I have been watching you all that time.”

  “Uh...yeah. Well I won’t make a mistake this time.”

  Avalon slunk up to the wall beside the door and froze in the shadows, watching for anything that moved. With lithe steps, she crouched in front of the door and swung her backpack to the ground beside her. She slipped her hand inside and felt around until she found the tin foil and wire, secured in a zip locked baggie. She pulled out what she needed, and set to work, folding the tinfoil repeatedly until she had built up multiple layers. She activated the pin light on the camera and shone it into the crack of the door frame, scanning for security contacts. At each one, she wedged a flattened wad of tinfoil in front of the frame contact, gluing it in place with a touch of contact cement. She worked quickly, worried that the spotlight would flood the rooftop once again. “OK, tinfoil is in place, you ready to do this?” she whispered.

  “Do it,” said Mitch.

  Avalon reached forward, slid a pry bar behind the door latch and pulled. The door sprung open and swung out onto the roof, revealing a dark staircase, illuminated by strips of emergency lighting. Avalon froze, muscles tensed to run, but no alarm sounded. Although the break in had been silent, she knew some alarms did not make a big noise. If she had tripped a silent alarm, she would not know it until she had more company than she wanted. She remained still, listening hard. Several moments passed, and then with a deep sigh of relief, she put the materials back in her pack and pulled out a flashlight. She moved cautiously into the metal stairwell, pulling the door closed behind her. Outfitted with a panic bar, the door opened easily from the inside. A large warning sign plastered the upper half. “CAUTION! ALARM MAY SOUND!” She chuckled as she read it. “Or not,” she muttered as she turned away. Mitch laughed softly in her ear. “Be careful now.”

  Avalon crept down the metal ribbed staircase, silently treading down the squared spiral through four turns. At the landing, another door presented itself, the metal hatching embedded in the glass confirming it to be a safety glass. Avalon slid up beside the door and tested the knob. The door was not locked. On the other side was a long concrete block corridor, painted a faded yellow. Avalon craned her neck, looking both directions but the corridor appeared to be deserted. She examined the frame and could find no evidence of any security feature on the door.

  “That is the access corridor for the fifth floor. It connects the two halves of the warehouse. You need to go to the right,” said Mitch. “At the end of the corridor will be another door. On the other side of it, there will be a hallway with a series of doors. The doors lead to different laboratories. Peet says that you are looking for a door that says “Lab E- Environmental Testing”. Beware, many of the scientists work long hours. There could still be someone in the lab even at this late hour.”

  “OK, got it.” Avalon took another glance through the door glass, then opened it and stepped into the hallway. The hum of air conditioning greeted her ears, and she saw a grate in the ceiling from which cold air was flowing into the stuffy corridor. She followed the ductwork in her mind’s eye, tracing the route down the hallway in the direction she was walking. The corridor ended in a set of double metal doors. These did not have glass and reminded Avalon of the doors in hospitals that hid an operating theatre. She put her ear up to the door crack, listening for the telltale sound of people in the corridor, but all was quiet. She opened the door a crack. There were no people in sight. She opened it further and stuck her head around the frame. The hallway was empty. She slipped through and gently closed the door. The hallway was about fifty feet long, with a door every ten feet on both sides of the hall. She ran down the hall, reading the doorplates as she did. She almost ran right past the door, for the plaque on the door was nothing more than a frame affixed to the door in which was a sign. This one was hand written in a spidery scrawl in faded blue ink, and said, “Lab E - Environmental Testing”.

  “Is this the place?” she whispered into her mic.

  “Peet says that is the place. Use the camera, slide it under the door.”

  Avalon knelt beside the door, pulled out a tiny camera on a wire, and slid it under the door. The signal was being sent back to Peet to view and relay to Mitch what was on the other side.

  “Move the camera now, to the right, just a touch. There, hold.”

  Avalon checked the corridor. All was silent and still.

  “Okay, the room is empty. You are good to enter, but do so silently. We do not know what is beyond these doors. This is as far as Peet has ever been.”

  “Acknowledged. I will be careful. You are such a worry wart, Mitch.”

  “And you are a precocious child. You must have given your father grey hair.”

  Avalon smiled as she packed the camera back up and entered the lab.

  The room was lit by a solitary lamp, sitting on a wooden desk that was shoved into the corner of the room. Journals were stacked on the desktop beside a computer screen in sleep mode, bubbles floating across the surface. She paused to glance down at the mess of papers. She scanned the desk, looking for anything of interest. Two textbooks were stacked against the wall. Avalon bent her head to read the spines. ‘Genetic Transformation In The Modern Age’, ‘On The Origin Of The Species’, and ‘Diseases Of The Ancients: The DNA of a Global Killer’, she muttered to herself, surprised to recognize the titles. They had been in her father’s study too, on the third shelf, on what he called the reference section of his office. A pair of silver cuff links sat in the tray on the base of the monitor. She picked them up, tumbling them in her hand and her eyes widened when she saw the golden bee raised on the flat surface of the cuff links. It was the same as the symbol on her father’s jacket. She saw that symbol every time she wore it. The cuff links went into her pocket too, as she scanned the desk for more interesting items. She pulled open the top drawer and sifted through the contents, shoving items aside. Several photographs of greenhouses were sitting in the drawer, and hand sketches of what Avalon took to be new designs for greenhouses. Three matchbooks advertising a bar in Solace with the name “Frankie’s Finger Food and Burger Joint” bounced around amongst partially used pens and discarded lunch receipts. Matches, awesome! I can always use matches, she thought and slipped one into her pocket. She shoved the drawer closed and took one final look around the desk. That was when Avalon’s eyes fell on a picture, taped to the top right corner of the computer monitor. It was an old photo, the colours fading from the print. In the photo four young people laughed into the camera, arms flung over each other’s shoulders, one man bent over as though he had told the punchline to the funniest joke in the world. Two men and two women, wearing jeans and hoodies in the orange and black of Solace University, were captured in various stages of mirth. It was a great photo, but that wasn’t what caught Avalon’s eye. It was the circles that were drawn around two faces. One was her mother and one was her father. Without giving it a moment’s thought, she snatched the photo from the computer front and stuffed it into the inner pocket of her jump suit.

  A short hallway ended in a bathroom, the door ajar. Three more doors exited the room. One room had a light on, as evidenced by the thin ribbon shining from the base of the door. Avalon tiptoed past that door and moved to the last door by the bathroom. In bold black lettering, the words “NO STREET CLOTHING BEYOND THIS POINT- RESTRICTED ZONE” and “PROPER ATTIRE MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES - BIOHAZARD ZONE.” A keypad lock was placed to the left side of the door

  “Now, that looks promising,” she muttered into the mic and pulled out a jar and a brush from her pocket. She unscrewed the lid an
d dipped the brush into the contents then dusted the surface of the pad. The dust clung to the grease of fingerprints, showing the four most common keys. The urge to hit the keys randomly surged through her but she knew she had to work systematically, she just hoped it wouldn’t be the last combination she tried. Only five combination tries later, the door lock clicked open. Finally, I can get the fertilizer and get out of here! 1859! Avalon giggled to herself, 1859 – Darwin’s theory of evolution – it was just the kind of geeky scientist code her father would use. With a satisfied grin, Avalon dropped her goggles in place and opened the door. Three steps took her to a second door. This one did not have a lock and swung open at her touch.

  The vast greenhouse before her was on night lighting yet it was possible to see the plants growing in raised and vertical beds throughout the complex. The food production was off the scale. Her stomach rumbled in automatic response to the cornucopia of edible sustenance and her hands actually twitched toward a plump papaya that dangled in front of her nose. She turned away, knowing that she was not there to steal food, yet the urge was overwhelming.

  Sensing her distress, Mitch whispered, “Ignore the food, Avalon. I have plenty. You will not go hungry again.”

  Avalon moved carefully through the rows of growing things. The humid, earthy smells of damp soil and flowering plants assailed her nose. It tickled and she felt an urge to sneeze. Alarmed, she pinched her nostrils hard, holding it so long that she gasped for air when she released, scrubbing the reddened tip. She raised her goggles in order to see the gardens with her own eyes. The verdant growth was so intense that she dropped the goggles back in place.

  “Mitch, what kind of fertilizer could do all this?” she whispered, slowly revolving her head so the camera would capture the view.

  “I don’t know, Avalon, but whatever it is, the government doesn’t want to share the information. You have been in there for forty-five minutes. I need you to press on and get out: our window of an hour is almost up.”

  “OK, I am moving.” Avalon’s eyes searched the interior for a storage container or stacks of bags, anything to indicate the presence of the fertilizer but saw nothing. She chose a path that would take her around the greenhouse to the far end where she thought she saw the hatch. At first, she thought it was an irrigation connection of some sort, but it wasn’t circular. Rather, it was hexagon shaped, and made of a waxed surface that glimmered in the dull lighting. Curious, approached the hatch. A dull hum met her ear. It reminded her of the hum of a transformer yet it was softer, less mechanical. She put her ear up to the opening, and the humming became a thrumming sound. She stood back, mystified. A screen door stood to one side. “Should I go in?”

  “Yes, let’s see what is in there.”

  Avalon turned the handle and pushed open the door. Instead of a storage room full of bags or bins of fertilizer, a massive multi story structure of tubing met her eye. The whole room hummed with an energy that made her skin crawl. She walked alongside the structure to a viewing portal and that is when she saw them. Bees, millions of bees were flying and swarming through the tubing. The whir of their wings set up an echoing, buzzing resonance. She could see the cells of the maturing workers, tiny antennae twitching as they flexed within the nurturing cell. “Are you seeing this?” she whispered to Mitch, staring in awe at the abundant live bees, missing in the outside world. The contrast was shocking.

  “Pan slowly around the structure. Let us get a look at it.”

  Avalon did as she was told, taking in all the nuances of the contraption. At one end, a series of flowers bloomed, planted in a dark moist soil not found in the outside world any longer. Tubes dripped a serum into the soil keeping it at perfect growing conditions. “Look at the plants, Mitch. They are gigantic! Do you think the fertilizer is in a liquid state? It would explain why I don’t see any bags lying around.”

  “Could be. If that is the case, there must be a spot where it is mixed and fed to the plants. Try that door to your right.”

  Avalon nodded, even though he couldn’t see her, and strode over to a narrow door that led behind the contraption’s walls. Behind the door on which a sign said “CAUTION: LIVE BEES” was a metal catwalk that ran around the exterior of the beehive. Avalon suddenly realized that was exactly what the facility was, a giant metal beehive. Keeping her footfalls light, she tiptoed along the catwalk, following the drip lines along the wall until she came to another room with a sign that said “NO ADMITTANCE - BIOHAZARD”, and the symbol for toxicity symbol in yellow below it. The door was fitted with time locks and heavy shielding. She could not see what was beyond.

  “Wait, Avalon.” She paused, listening to their whispered conference but not able to make out their words, them Mitch spoke. “Peet says that he thinks the fertilizer is a bio hazard that the government has been keeping quiet. They don’t want the populace to know what it is, or that it is toxic. Check your suit, and close up your face before you go inside. Make sure every seal is tight.”

  Avalon dropped down the screen and attached the Velcro connections and flaps and double-checked that everything was secure. She could hear her own ragged, anxious breath within the suit. “OK, I am ready.”

  “OK, we are switching over to your suit cameras. No foolish moves, Avalon. Keep your inspection short and quick. Grab a sample if possible and get out. Be aware that should you set off an alarm, the security system will lock down the room trapping you inside. Do nothing without talking to us first.”

  “I understand.” Avalon put her hand on the door handle and pulled it open.

  Chapter 11

  The Secret Room

  AVALON STEPPED INTO the room, which was noticeably cooler than the room she had just left. The door swung closed with a click as she let go of it, mind already working on the puzzle before her.

  Inside the room was a water trough, like the kind a miner might use when panning for gold. The stream ran from high up on the wall and down through a trough on the floor that contained white pebbles. The water washed across the pebbles and into a vat at the end that had a screen across the top. The trough was not the strangest thing in the room, however. On the opposite wall, connected to the hive was a series of tubes that spread out around the hive and off into the greenhouse, merging with the irrigation system. On another wall, a powdered version of the stones fed steadily into a mixing bowl with a large paddle, churning the water and stone mix into a milky paste.

  Avalon could not make any sense of the room. What could possibly be hazardous about any of it? Puzzled, she spied rows of stacked wooden crates with the biohazard warning symbol emblazoned on their sides. A crowbar leaned up against the side of box and she picked it up, forcing the flattened end into the crack between wall and lid pulled up. With a squeak, the lid rose until she could look inside the box.

  There, in the crate, was a skeleton, resting in shredded newspaper. It was not human, but some kind of animal. The bones were huge, and now that she knew she was looking at bones, she realized that the odd sizing of the crates was for even larger bones. Bones so large, they could only be one thing. Dinosaur bones.

  “Mitch, they are dinosaur bones.” Silence greeted her words. “Mitch? Mitch can you hear me?”

  She looked back to the door and realized that the room had cut off her communication. She knew if she spent too long in the room, they would panic, so she decided to take a sample of the bones with her. She closed the lid and went back over to the trough. As she stepped closer to it, she realized that it was not rocks at all, but smaller bones that littered the base. Working quickly, she took a multi-zippered plastic bag out of her backpack and scooped up some of the bones, being careful to not let her fingers come in contact with anything in the room. She also scooped up a sample of the paste, and for extra safety, she double bagged them both and tucked them back inside the backpack.

  Zipping up the backpack, she tossed it over her back and just as she was turning away, she saw a chamber with hinges protruding out of the beehive. One of the tub
es fed into this chamber. Curious, she lifted a panel on the metal chamber. Inside was a perfect beehive, every side of it visible from a glass panel that hid behind the plate. Attached to the hive was a tube that allowed the bees to move back and forth between the smaller cells to the larger hive. There was little activity right now, as it was nighttime and the bees were for the most part inactive. On impulse, she slid the shut off in place, pulled the pins holding the hive to the tube, and added the hive to her backpack.

  It was time to get out. She marched back over to the time lock door and pulled on the handle. It wouldn’t budge. She yanked on it, pulling with both hands. Nothing happened. It was then she saw that the biohazard light above the door had been activated, and knew that the door had been locked to contain the room. Panicked, she searched for a cancellation button, anything to turn off the sign but there was nothing in the room. A TV screen on one wall lit up and she could see security guards running down the halls she had so recently traversed. True panic set in now and she ran about the room, searching for a way out. Avalon looked up and that is when she noticed the grillwork for the ventilation system. It was located directly above the boxes full of bones. She ran over to the crates and climbed up on top of them to reach the ceiling. Avalon pulled her multi-tool switchblade from her pocket and quickly unscrewed the four corner screws then jammed it between the cover and the ceiling and pried. It fell to the floor with a crash. She slid her backpack off and threw it into the vent then hauled herself up into the confined space crawling and pushing her bag ahead of her until she reached secondary screen. The ventilation shaft took her back out over the corner of the hive and as she crawled through the ventilation shaft, she could see downward termination vents every few feet that fed fresh air to the hive. Angry voices echoed up to her and she grimaced as her fears were confirmed. They were aware that there was an intruder in their midst.