The Ghost of an Empire

Chapter Fifteen

I pointed to the chutes. The others understood at once. I had known that we had a great team, but these moments really made me appreciate it. 

We picked our way along the treacherous cliffside, with the wind blowing us all different directions and the sleet blowing into our eyes and ears. 

I was still carefully scanning the path for cameras, and as we rounded a slight corner we almost ended right on top of one. I quickly held out my hand behind me in a "stop" gesture, and my friends did so immediatly. I didn't know how we would get past this one, though. It didn't look like we would be able to. There didn't seem to be any waves reaching high enough to get here. 

So I took a chance. I shot the camera with my stun pistol. I frantically signalled for Suuri and Aika to follow me, as we stepped over the camera and quickly crouched behind some rocks. I cautiously peered over at the camera. The camera seemed to be short-circuiting. But then after a few seconds it was alright again. Good! I prayed that the people watching the cameras would just think that a bit of water had gotten into the casing. 

We continued down the cliff at this same slow pace, every one of us hoping desperately that nobody would look out of the windows and happen to see us. Fortunately, there weren't many windows on this side of the building, compared to the other sides. 

After a while, we finally reached the level that the chutes were on. There didn't seem to be any cameras here, either. And now we had to swim. 

"This is going to be so. Much. Fun.", Aika said sarcastically. I smirked ruefully, and Suuri replied: "Oh hell yeah. I've been looking forward to this my whole life."

We plunged into the freezing, iron-grey water. I'm glad we had our WeatherCapes or we all would have frozen. 

We swam as quickly as possible towards the chutes. Once we reached them, we found that there was a concrete slab with ankle-deep water over it outside of them, so we could examine all three of them, which we quickly did. And we soon found out that one of the chutes was for garbage, one was for chemicals, and one was for waste. So none of them were very great options. 

Suuri dug around in the bottom of the garbage chute, while me and Aika checked out the other two. We soon saw that the waste chute would be impossible. It was far too narrow. And, of course, it stank. 

Then there was the chemical chute. This one was better. There was a rusty maintenance ladder, that clearly hadn't been used since the time of the Great War. So it looked ideal, except for one thing. The walls of the chute, as well as the ladder, were covered in a mixture of all sorts of chemicals. I was sure that you wouldn't want a body part to touch any of that. But at first even that seemed okay. Our WeatherCapes could protect us. But we realized that we wouln't be able to climb with the fumes. The fumes would surely knock us out soon and then slowly kill us. 

We went back to Suuri and told him what we had found. I asked: "Did you have any luck, Suuri?". Even with his hands filthy and his wet hair and face, I couldn't help noticing that he still looked quite attractive. I tried to stop myself from thinking that. 

"Well, Eris, we wouldn't be able to go up this chute, but look what I found." He held up his arm. Hanging off of it by their straps were three gas masks. "Yes", said Aika. She grabbed them from him and dipped them into the sea water to clean them off a bit. Then she sprayed some Decontanimator on them. We put them on our heads and began to climb the ladder. 

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The ladder was really long. We didn't talk the whole way, in case our voices echoed out the shaft. The climb took about twenty minutes, but it seemed a whole lot longer. 

When we finally reached the top, I peered out into the room it came out in. It was very hard to peer at the whole thing, because the room was huge. It was bigger than an average house. Way bigger. And it was filled with very strange things. But what made it even stranger, was the fact that none of them were working. There were huge glass tanks, completely empty. Giant steel boilers, that must have once been whirring and clanking. Colossal furnaces, with no fires in them. In fact, therewas dust and spiderwebs on all of these things. 

I slowly got off of the ladder and stepped onto this big room's stone floor. I beckoned the others. We walked silently in between all of these huge machines, until we saw that there was actually nothing here that was working. 

Suuri broke the silence. He whispered: "Is this place alive?" His whisper seemed to echo a thousand times, breaking the silence that was decades old. His voice repeated itself in every corner and crack of the room. 

He looked around himself with a scared, almost guilty look. I understood his expression. Breaking a silence here, like this, in the heart of the enemy's headquarters that had not been seen by any eyes for eighty years seemed wrong. It was enough to make anyone uneasy. 

And then we saw the eyes.