“What?” Caroline asked. “Isn’t that how you find secret panels?”
Simone walked around the column. There were a few shallow shelves set into it, holding what looked like old glass plates. They reminded her of seashells. Behind one of them was a small indentation. Simone pressed it, and part of the column wall slid open.
Simone and Caroline looked into the space. It was empty—no floor, just a long, dark shaft.
“You don’t think there’s actually… I mean, this can’t go all the way down, right?” Caroline asked.
Simone shook her head. “No way. But it is an elevator shaft—look,” she said, pointing at the sides of the shaft.
“So the elevator is gone.”
“Or someone rode it down to wherever it goes.” Simone looked down into the shaft, but it was too dark. There was a maintenance ladder along the side and she grabbed hold of it. It shook, apparently unused for years, but held. “You coming?” she asked. Caroline nodded. Simone started climbing down. After about ten feet, the ladder stopped at an old metal walkway, which turned into a spiral staircase downwards. It was narrow and dark, lit only by a few wall sconces. Caroline joined her on the platform.
“This looks unsafe,” she said.
“Yep,” Simone said, starting down the stairs and clinging to the wall. She held her gun in the hand that touched the bannister, not putting too much weight on it in case the metal gave way. Caroline followed. They walked down for five minutes, placing each foot down gently on a step before giving it their whole weight.
“Okay,” Caroline said. “We have to be below the surface by now. The building was only four stories above water. We’re at least seven stories down. It has to be real.”
“Maybe it’s just an air pocket,” Simone said, though she knew Caroline was right. They had to be below the surface. “That happens, right?”
“This is crazy.”
Simone swallowed. She leaned against the wall, feeling as though the metal stairs were shaking. She could hear her heart beating rapidly in her chest, and she was afraid that even that small vibration could bring the walls crashing down around them.
It was real. She was below the water, and she was still breathing. “Yeah,” Simone said after a long pause. “Yeah. Do you want to head back up?”
Caroline took a while to answer, and when she did, it was in a soft voice. “No.”
They spiraled downward for what seemed like an hour, the only sound their footsteps and breathing and the pale noise from the storm so far above. When Simone heard the music, she thought at first it was her mind playing tricks on her. But then Caroline hissed, saying she heard a bass. Simone nodded and put her finger to her lips. They walked down more quietly now, their feet light on the metal, as the music grew louder and clearer. It was something with bass and saxophone—old music with sweeping riffs performed by brass orchestras—the sort of music that felt like the happiest moments of life before the flood. A brighter light shone on the floor where the stairs landed. There was an elevator car there, with fogged glass. The shaft opened in an archway, from which a dim light poured through. Simone stopped at the edge of the archway and motioned for Caroline to stop behind her. She poked her head around.
It was a train station. Huge, with platforms and tracks that went on for the length of a cruise ship before stopping at towering sealed metal doors. The walls of the station looked like glass, curving upwards into an arc until they met a strip of metal at the top, where a chandelier hung. Outside the glass, the light from inside spilled into the ocean a short way, and Simone could see fish swim by and, in the distance, the bright green dots of the algae generators on the surface. From here, they looked like stars. It couldn’t possibly exist, but it did, and Simone was in it, under the water, looking up at the city she thought she’d known her entire life.
The station wasn’t being used as a station, though. Someone had set up sofas, a large bed, a table, floor lamps, even a TV and speakers, which was where the music was coming from. One of the sofas was positioned so that anyone sitting on it could gaze through the glass at the ocean. And Lou was sitting in it, humming along with the music. Simone raised her gun and stepped out into the station.
“I know you’re here,” Lou said, turning around. “A bell sounds whenever anyone opens the shaft upstairs. You could have just called the elevator.” Simone walked towards Lou, her gun still raised. Caroline stepped out behind her and gasped at the sight of the station. Lou turned around and smiled at Simone. She looked different down here. Maybe it was the light or the water casting strange, moving lines on her, but she seemed softer. “Do you have it?” Lou asked. “Do you have my painting?”
“The one you killed Henry for?” Simone asked. Lou’s face wavered, and she looked down.
“He stole it from me,” she said. It wasn’t a defense, just an explanation. “For years my husband and I had it down here.” She gestured at the large metal doors, and Simone could see there was a space where it looked like a painting had been removed, its outline left in dust. “But when he died… I didn’t want it down here anymore—not for a little while, anyway. Until it hurt less to look at. So I took it to the warehouse and hid it there, so I wouldn’t have to look at it. But Henry found it, and instead of asking me what it was—and he knew it was mine, anyone could tell that—he didn’t ask… he just took it. Can you imagine? We’d treated him like family, and he stole it from me—a painting of me and my husband—so that he could make some money telling people about this.” She gestured to the ceiling, her fingers outstretched, her palms curved like a halo. She laughed. “Whoever built this place never finished it. If you open those doors, the whole place floods and it becomes just like anywhere else in the city. But we found it, after everyone else had left. We stayed, and we found this secret place. Useless, but… beautiful. We lived here, under the waves. It was our home. And Henry wanted to sell it.” She frowned again and looked at Simone sadly. “So yes, I killed him. Do you have my painting?”
“The police have it,” Simone said. Lou looked as though she’d been slapped across the face and was about to cry, but looked down instead. “I came here so I could take your confession and bring you in. They’ll go easier on you that way.”
“Everyone is going to know about this place now, aren’t they?”
“Probably,” Simone said.
“It’s amazing,” Caroline said. She was walking along the other glass wall, dragging her hand across it. “It’s unreal.” Lou looked up and nodded.
“You should take a moment,” Lou said. “You should look around, and enjoy it. Then I’ll come with you.” She turned around and sat back down on the sofa. Simone lowered her gun.
“It’s pure Glassteel,” Caroline said. “Molded without a base structure underneath.”
“We think it was supposed to be a showpiece,” Lou said, still gazing out at the water. A family of fish swam by, then darted off into the darkness. “The chandelier, the glass walls. It was supposed to be some sort of demonstration of how the rich could weather the floods, how they could create underwater cities.”
“But they never finished it,” Caroline repeated. “Or something went wrong.”
“When we found it, there were some plans. Apparently beyond that door there was supposed to be another station to offload large shipments, and the tunnel would go back to the mainland and to other spots in the city. There was even a station at the edge of the city marked ‘to Europe.’ They had big ideas.”
“Do you still have the plans?” Caroline asked.
“Upstairs somewhere. We cleared them out when we made this place our home. Our private little paradise.” Lou paused. “And now it’s going to be destroyed. People are going to come down here, walk in and out. Make it a museum or science experiment.” Simone and Caroline exchanged a glance but said nothing. They knew she was right. Whoever claimed this place might even try to make it work.