Down by Brett Battles

“Are you okay?”
    “What? Uh, I’m fine.”
    He regarded her for a moment, thinking he should press the issue, but he didn’t know her well enough to do so. “All right. Should I get everyone together so you can tell us what you want us to do next?”
    She was quiet for so long he thought she wasn’t going to answer, but then she said, “A small scout group, no more than three, does a check around. Everyone else stays here.”
    He waited to see if there’d be more but apparently she was done. “Sure,” he said. “I’ll make that happen.”
    A beat. “I’m one of the three.”
    “Oookay. How about Estella and me going with you?”
    For the first time since he’d walked over, Chloe looked at him. “Whatever works.”
    __________
     
    W HY DO I know this place? Chloe wondered.
    The smooth concrete that covered everything, the curved intersections between the roof and the top of the walls, the hue of the lights, and then, of course, the blue scrubs worn by the couple she discovered in the room.
    She did know it. She had no doubt about that.
    She knew that when she and her companions exited the room they would come upon a hallway that curved off in either direction, eventually rejoining itself and completing a giant circle. She knew exactly where each door was, and in some cases what was on the other side. She knew where the elevators were, and that the two floors above this—levels nine and eight—were the “wards,” and that on level seven she’d find greenhouses and refrigerated food storage lockers. Six, five, and four contained more wards. Three was administration and security. Two and one—supplies, general living quarters, cafeteria, and training rooms.
    How do I know all this?
    “Chloe? Knock them out?”
    The words were distant, meaningless at first. She had to concentrate hard to process what she’d heard.
    “Um, yes,” she told Robert, after working out what he meant. “Do it.”
    Barely a second seemed to pass before he was standing next to her, asking her what they should do and if she was all right.
    Focus, goddammit.
    As she issued her instructions, it felt like she was outside herself, watching her lips move but not really controlling them.
    “Sure. I’ll make that happen,” he said.
    She realized she hadn’t been as clear as she’d thought. “I’m one of the three.”
    Walking up to the doorway that led into the base wasn’t difficult, but stepping through it felt like the hardest thing she’d ever done. She forced herself to keep going, worried that if she stopped, she’d never move again.
    __________
     
    R ENI WAS TOO late to catch the men as they left McHenry’s quarters. She peeked into the room only long enough to see that her boss and the two med techs from the hallway were restrained and unconscious like her colleagues back in the barracks.
    Racing down the corridor and keeping as quiet as she could, she listened for them, finally hearing them off to the left, down the outer loop—the corridor that ran in a circle around the perimeter of each floor. The new direction took her to the east elevator lobby, where she arrived just as the doors closed on the car the men had entered.
    The elevator indicator showed the car stopping on five, eight, and finally ten. But which level had they exited?
    She tried to put herself in their minds. As far as the men knew, they had neutralized the base’s security force and now had free run of the facility.
    Okay, fine. But that still doesn’t tell me where they got off .
    If they had come for something specific, they could be on any level. If they were here to destroy Dream Sky, the elevator stop at the bottom made the most sense. With serious opposition out of the way, they could start there and work their way up, clearing floor by floor.
    Level ten, then.
    She poked the recall button over and over.
    “Come on, come on, come on.”
    After what seemed like forever but was really no more than half a minute, the car that had been on