“Over here,” Magnolia said, waving at him across the room. She stood at the base of another tower, but she was looking around the corner.
Rodger jogged over to her, trying to ignore the sounds of the creature still slamming itself against the door. He hoped it would either get bored or give itself a concussion soon.
“Everything I’ve found so far has been destroyed,” Magnolia said. “But maybe if we can get those fired up, we can figure out what the hell happened here.”
She centered her light on a raised platform in the middle of the room. A dozen computer monitors circled a central station. Perhaps they could operate the giant crane from there.
They crossed the dark room, their lights dancing over the towers. Everywhere Rodger looked, he found destroyed capsules.
“You stand guard,” Magnolia said. “I’m going to see if I can get these working.”
She jumped onto the platform and pulled the chair away from the rotunda desk. After a final scan of the room, Rodger climbed the two stairs and joined her.
“How about you stand guard?” he said. I’m the engineer here, and I think I already know how this warehouse operates.” He raised his eyes to the crane on the track above them.
Magnolia shrugged and then stepped out of the way. He grabbed the back of the cracked leather chair and pulled it away from the desk. The cushion was surprisingly soft, and the computer equipment looked fairly well preserved. It was as if this room had somehow been frozen in time.
He brushed the dust off a keyboard and hit the power key. The button stuck, and the screen remained blank. For the next few minutes, he tried turning on the other computers, but none would activate.
“Well, we know there’s power,” he said, mostly to himself. “My guess is, the system is protected.
Footfalls tapped on the platform as he worked—Magnolia, pacing behind him. He pulled his minicomputer from his pocket and patched it to the ITC machine.
The screen of his device flickered on, and he typed several commands on the small keypad. He connected to the mainframe, but just as he had suspected, the system was firewall protected.
“It’s gone,” Magnolia whispered.
“What?”
He couldn’t see it, but he was pretty sure Magnolia rolled her eyes behind her visor.
“The giant glowing monster that was trying to kill us,” she said.
Rodger listened, but there was only silence. He had been so focused on starting the computers, he didn’t notice that the beast had stopped ramming the door.
“Great,” he said, glancing back down.
“How are you coming along?”
Rodger just shrugged. He didn’t like to talk when he worked, and right now he needed to focus. Nothing he was trying seemed to work. The security wall protecting access to the operations system was more complex than anything he had ever seen. Someone had really wanted to keep unauthorized people from accessing it, which, in a way, explained the broken glass capsules. Whatever had destroyed the chambers had found the easiest way around hacking the system.
“Rodge, you sure you don’t want me to try?”
“Nope.” Then he tried the last thing he could think of: finding a back door to get through the firewall. A few lines of code and a very low belch later, a white glow suddenly filled the circle of monitors. He smiled, but not because he was into the system. Magnolia looked glorious in the light, like an angel.
“You did it!” She slapped her hands together softly, then looked over her shoulder, back the way they had come, but the door was out of sight.
He set his minicomputer on the desk and scooted the chair closer to the ITC computer while Magnolia hovered behind him. She brought a gloved hand to her helmet, as if trying to chew her fingernails.
“Let’s see what we can find,” Rodger said, clicking the ITC logo.
“Welcome,” said a smooth voice behind them.
Both Rodger and Magnolia whirled around to see the ghost of a middle-aged man with dark skin, standing on the floor ten feet from the rotunda. The translucent apparition took a step forward and clasped his hands behind his back.
Not a ghost. A hologram.
Rodger stood and smiled at the odd-looking man with a neat beard and short-cropped hair.
The man smiled back at Rodger with a perfect set of teeth. He was wearing a suit and creaseless pants. Rodger had never seen anyone in such nice, new clothes.
“My name is Timothy Pepper, and I’m the manager of this facility.”
Magnolia and Rodger exchanged a look.
“I’m Magnolia,” she said, “and this is Rodger.”
“Very pleased to meet you, Magnolia and Rodger,” Timothy replied. He unclasped his hands and spread his arms out as if he was about to give praise. “You have accessed the cryogenic chambers of ITC Communal Thirteen.”
He pointed at the towers framing the rotunda on both sides. “There are one thousand and twenty capsules containing various species here, all of them slated to be opened in…” Timothy raised his wrist to check an elaborate watch and continued, “Two hundred forty years, two months, five days, twelve hours, forty-five minutes, thirteen seconds.”
Rodger nudged Magnolia. “This guy has no idea.”
Timothy cocked a bushy brow at Rodger.
“How long has it been since the system was accessed?” Magnolia asked.
The hologram checked his watch a second time. “One hundred three years, two months, fifteen days, fourteen hours, fifteen—”
“Yeah, we get it,” Magnolia said, cutting him off. “Timothy, something’s happened to your facility, and we’re trying to figure out what.”
“I’m sorry, but my system has been damaged and I have been dormant since error: time stamp not found.” The hologram flickered, and Timothy said, “Please stand by while I access my archives.”
A second later, the apparition vanished, and a loud clicking sounded overhead. Magnolia and Rodger both raised their weapons as banks of lights on the towers switched on, filling the entire room with a bright glow that forced Rodger to shield his visor with his arm.
“Something is wrong,” said a voice. “Something terrible has happened.”
Rodger’s eyes slowly adjusted to the light, and he pulled his arm down to see Timothy standing in front of the computer to his left.
“Shit, man!” Rodger said, jerking away. “Don’t scare me like that.”
“My apologies, Rodger.”
“What happened here?” Magnolia asked again. “And did any of the capsules survive?”
“Ten capsules are still functioning in loading bay nineteen,” Timothy replied. “I will retrieve unit nine hundred eighty-seven shortly.”
The claws on the crane clanked open, and the unit screeched across the rusted track. It moved around a corner, out of sight.
“So you going to tell us what happened?” Magnolia asked.
“The system was damaged in the attack one hundred and three years, two months—”
Rodger grabbed his rifle when he saw a flash of movement dart between towers. He jerked the muzzle up at a Siren skittering toward the bottom chamber of the nearest tower, but Magnolia reached out and put a hand on the barrel.
“Just a hologram, Rodge.”
The beast straddled the capsule and clawed at the lid, nails shrieking over the glass. In a fit of rage, it smashed its head into the pane again and again. Another holographic Siren joined the first, jumping onto the chamber. Together, they smashed through the glass and pried it open with their claws.