Daughter of Nox

Chapter Thirty-Four

As Alexander groaned from above her Freya could see a thin band of light cutting through the dark. The band grew, widening more each time he gave another heave. She could see him now–his back was leaning into an entrance set into the ceiling of the tunnel.

The hinges squealed and light dumped down from above. Freya held her hand in front of her eyes, shielding them from the brightness. Slowly, her eyes adjusted and she pulled her hand away.

Alexander was smiling down at her from above the hatch. "You coming?"

Freya gave a weak smile. She latched onto the rungs of the ladder and hoisted herself through the hatch.

She gathered herself and looked around. The light spilling down on her had looked like the beam of a spotlight in the absolute darkness of the tunnel. But as her eyes adjusted she realized it wasn't much more than the glow of a mini holo lamp.

Freya didn't recognize the place. A small control panel sat in the middle of the room, panels flickering along the surface. The walls swept up, perfectly round, as if they'd stepped inside the top half of a sphere. The light in the room seemed to emanate from the walls.

"Isn't it great?"

Freya turned to look at him. His arms were spread wide and his head was cocked back as if he was trying to look at the whole room at once.

"Yeah," she said, unsure what exactly he was talking about. "But what is it?"

He pulled his gaze away from the room and smiled at her. "The astrometrics lab."

"The astro-whatrics?"

"Astrometrics," he said.

She shook her head.

He held a hand up. "Watch."

Freya followed him with her eyes as he walked toward the control panel. The glow from the walls cut out and threw the room darkness as absolute as the tunnel.

As Freya's eyes adjusted, the twinkle from the control panel became more clear. She could barely make out the outline of his body standing over it.

"Is it just me or do you seem weirdly at home in dark places?"

Even in the darkness Freya could see the sudden surprise shining on Alexander's face as he looked up quickly.

"What do you mean?" he said, and there was an obvious tension in his voice.

"I just meant this place," Freya said, a little unsure of herself. "And the tunnel into here. They were both dark."

"Oh, right," he said, his voice still bound tight with a hint of tension. "I guess you could say that. The dark isn't bad. It's the ghouls in the dark that you need to worry about."

Freya gave him a look of alarmed. "I don't know what that is, but it doesn't sound like something I want to meet."

Alexander chuckled. "Only kidding. Supposedly some of the First Wave who did the terraforming on Nox got exposed to chemicals or radiation or something. Some of them are supposed to still be down here."

"The terraforming was, like, hundreds of years ago. how could they still be alive?"

"Don't ask me. I'm not even from Nox," Alexander said. "It's just what people say."

Freya sized him up skeptically. "Which people?"

"Just people." He shrugged. "Anyways, it doesn't matter now that we're in here. Supposedly, ghouls hate the light."

As if on cue a pattern of flashes danced across the walls. Freya stayed silent, still trying to figure out whether or not he was leading her on about the ghoul thing.