35. Seriously

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Courage is lack of planning.

The Manuals of the Bunker, Vol. 3, Verse 42

The door into the bunker stood open, just like we had left it

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The door into the bunker stood open, just like we had left it.

We approached it carefully. I half-expected Wolfe to appear from the cramped room on its other side.

But he didn't.

Nor did we see him through the small window of the inner door.

Amy tried to turn its handle, but it was blocked.

"I think we first need to close the outer door." I did so, and the inner light turned from red to green. "When one door is open, the other one is locked."

"Why's that?"

"I don't know." I gestured at the inner door. "Try opening it."

"Now, it moves." She turned its wheel. "Ye're smarter than ye look."

"Careful!" I stepped to her side and slowed her down. "We don't know what's on the other side."

Once the door was unlocked, we pulled it towards us. I leaned my shoulder against it, ready to push it close if someone were to attack.

But there was no one. The room with the lockers was empty. And so was the tunnel beyond. We followed it back the way we had come.

The air smelled old and moldy, not like the one on the surface.

"Do you think Wolfe has left?" Amy whispered as we approached the stairs that would take us down to the quarters of the Engineers.

"I don't know."

"He probably shat his pants." She snickered. "And he's now back at home, scrubbing them."

As we reached the stairwell, we listened. The faint hum of the machines filled the air.

When we began to descend, the structure groaned under our weight.

"Crap," Amy said.

We waited, but Wolfe failed to appear. So we continued. I gritted my teeth at every noise we made. But we reached the bottom of the stairwell without anyone attacking us.

"If he were still here, he'd have come running," Amy said.

"Right." I still whispered, though. "Let's go to the control room."

We entered, finding it unchanged.

I grabbed volume 1 of the manuals and squeezed it into the backpack, wedging it between some apples from the surface. "We need something to prove our story."

"Ye really think this will impress them?"

"I don't know," I said. "But everyone with eyes in their head should see that this manual is genuine. Only the Engineers wrote like that." And the one the bishop had was fake—anyone could have written it.

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