Moebius 2157 | ONC2019 Short List [Complete]

9 | Wasteland

Most people believed Level Two, the seat of the authorities, was only accessible via a large elevator, which representatives would take once in a while to visit the lower levels of the bunker city. Those visits had become as rare as the riots had become frequent, and so the elevator was disconnected from the power network most of the time.

What most people didn't know was that there was also stairwell on Level Four leading up to Two. Many such secret passageways crisscrossed throughout the bunker city, most of them only accessible to members of Security or the authorities themselves. It allowed them to be wherever they were needed – or ordered to be – quickly and efficiently.

Access to these passageways was restricted of course, secured by weekly changing passcodes that were distributed only to those with the appropriate roles in the shift rotation. But there wasn't an electronic lock that the highly advanced quantum computer in Alyssa's bracelet couldn't crack.

She didn't need the visor this time. She knew all of the shift rotations and patrol routes by heart, and she knew her former supervisor well enough to trust that none of them had changed. Indeed, as she was lying in wait in a shadowy corner before the entrance to the stairway, a group of five white-armored guards exited just when she had expected it.

Once they had passed, she hurried over to the door. This was easier than infiltrating Espira's apartment. She didn't have to care about not upsetting the immediate future by not leaving any traces, and so she had simply jammed all the surveillance cameras around her with the help of the bracelet. The system was error-prone anyway, so nobody would be suspicious.

Without the visor, it was harder to follow the bracelet's instructions for hacking an electronic door, but her fingers flew over the display quickly, mimicking the displayed on the small screen of the bracelet. With a click, the door opened, and she slipped inside.

The flight of stairs ended at another locked door. She could already hear the clang of heavy boots on metal coming from below. The next shift was arriving, and she'd have to be fast, so she opted to take an alternative route. On the ceiling, there was a metal grid that concealed the entrance to a ventilation shaft. She pushed it open, pulled herself up and put the grid back in place behind her. She held her breath until mere seconds later, the group of guards had passed underneath her.

Then she began her slow crawl through the ventilation shafts. The air up here had always been of higher quality than in the lower levels of the bunker, even now that it was running low the authorities likely made sure of that. She thought of the little girl and her father, how he had almost suffocated in his attempt to follow Alyssa through the abandoned corridors, and Travis, who had chosen a quicker end instead of waiting for suffocation. She wondered what it was that was about to happen in room 57, and why he thought she should see it.

The answer awaited her below now.

Through a fine mesh grid in the ceiling, she had a view on most of the meeting room below. She spotted a large, polished table with about twenty seats. From her position at the edge of the room, she couldn't see everybody's faces, but she recognized a few of the people.

She first spotted her former superior, Reginald Franklin, Head of Security. She had no fond memories of the man. He was easily recognizable by the large bald spot on his head that he pathetically tried to cover up by combing his thin, dark hair across it. Behind him stood two uniformed guards, towering over his bony figure and blazoning their rifles.

Next to him sat Andras Varga, the head of Resource Management. A lady from Health Care and Disease Control was there too. Next to her, somebody from Infrastructure.