The Iudex's day off

Chapter 42 - Why?

Neuvillette's POV

 Getting to the production zone wasn't all that difficult. After all, it's only appropriate that as Iudex I would know Meropide's layout.

 Getting to the upper lever, on the other hand...

 "The elevator is broken, Monsieur Neuvillette."

 "Broken?"

 "Yes, someone cut the cabals and sabotaged a few key components. It will take at least a day to get it fixed." An engineer said agitated.

 "We don't have a day."

 With the ever-growing commotion upstairs we hardly have an hour.

 "What about the stairs?"

 "Pardon?"

 "Are the stairs still functional?"

 Or were those rendered useless as well?

 "Respectfully, Monsieur Neuvillette, there are no stairs between the two levels of the production zone."

 I couldn't help but frown when I heard that comment.

 "Could you show me a map of the production zone's layout?"

 I could have sworn there was a set of stairs.

 A map was soon brought before me and I quickly noticed some discrepancies between this one and the one I had in my office.

 "Have you changed things down here in the past few decades?"

 "A few not used or broken down locations were sealed 30 years ago, but I'm not sure exactly where. That was before my time, Monsieur."

 And indeed, the chief engineer was rather young, barely thirty himself.

 Confirming our current location I took the map and started walking towards the northern side of the zone.

 Stopping before a wall, I turned to the group that had followed along.

 "Please tell his grace to write a damage report for this later and send it to the Palais Marmonia."

 "Damage report?"

 Instead of further explaining I swung my cane against the wall.

 Bang!

 I didn't hit it hard enough to break it. It was just to confirm-

 "Huh? This wall is hollow?" I heard someone notice.

 And indeed it was. My memory didn't fail me.

 Having confirmed my hypothesis, I swung my cane once more, this time with enough strength to pierce through the wall.

 A small hole was created, revealing a perfectly intact set of stairs.

 "This... Just a moment, Mosieur Neuvillette."

 While I could probably do it faster, for the sake of being sure that the structural integrity of the fortress wasn't damaged in any way, I let them cut a hole in the wall themselves.

 Against their reasoning, I was still the one who went up the stairs first though. It's been thirty years after all and we didn't know the reason why it was closed in the first place. There was no way of telling if the stairs were still functional or not.

 Luckily, they were still perfectly fine and after cutting another hole in the wall at the upper end, we arrived at the upper part of the production zone, at the exact opposite part from the commotion.