Ness nodded.“Thank you.”
Alice watched her go to the rear, remove her shoes, find the curtain and close herself from sight.
Luckily there was no way out except past them.She was grateful for a safe harbor right now, but when she started to feel better?
While Ty moved forward to try the radio, she pulled out her device and turned it on.
The signal was gone.
Con tried not to sink into the silence, not to let it wind his gut any tighter than it already was.He was a stunt pilot for Pete’s sake.He didn’t do freaked out.
Somehow, the thought of flying, of the loops and turns calmed his thoughts.This was a different kind of stunt, he decided, flying with his feet on the ground.
Once more back on balance, it seemed as if his senses sharpened until he felt the silence as a living thing.It was odd that such an absence of sound left him with the impression that they weren’t alone.
Rita seemed to be leading them in some specific direction and he wanted to ask where and why, but it felt like he couldn’t speak.Even the way they walked, was virtually soundless.
Since he couldn’t break the almost ghost-like silence, he focused his thoughts on what hecouldn’thear.
The sound of air moving in or out a ventilation system.Any kind of energy source providing the admittedly low lighting.
No distant sound of anything, not even whispers of sound other than their own breathing.
They’d shifted again.It hadn’t taken John’s disappearance to bring that home to him, but to when?He didn’t think they’d shifted locations—though he sensed there were differences—beyond the emptiness—to the structure.
More than anything, he wanted out.He wanted to see sky.To breathe real air.
Air.It was a bit stale, but it seemed like there was enough of it.Did that mean that somewhere there was an outside source?
They reached a set of double doors and Rita stopped, her gaze rising as if looking for surveillance perhaps?Then she touched a spot on the wall to her right.
Con couldn’t see any kind of panel, but the doors slid back.It took a few seconds for the lights to sense their presence and try to turn on.
It was a sad effort, turning the corners of what he thought was a fairly big space, murky and mysterious.
They’d gone from a tense sci-fi flick to a horror show.Con had never been a fan of horror and he had to put the brakes on his imagination before it took flight.
“I didn’t think it was possible,” Rita said, finally breaking her long silence.Her voice echoed weirdly around the room.
The ceiling must be higher than he could see, Con decided, following her deeper inside.
“What is this place?”Maybe they had changed locations.
“This is, well, it was, the launch room.This is where we’d leave.”She crossed to a bank of dark controls.“There were technicians here, at least five at any given time.In that direction in the locker room, where we’d leave our things and change.I wonder…”
Her voice trailed off as she headed toward that locker room.Con knew what she wondered without asking and followed her, though he also tried to see as much as he could.
Launch room?It did kind of have the look of a laboratory, or yes, control room.
At the locker room, Rita once again touched a spot and the door opened.The light in here was even more meagre, but he could see a line of narrow doors running off in either direction.
Did that many people travel through time?No wonder time was ticked off and pushing back.If it was time currently messing them over.
Rita sent down the line and stopped in front of one of the lockers.She hesitated, then touched a spot and it opened.
She bent and felt inside, then gave him a look of wonder.“My things are still here.”
“So whatever happened here, happened after you left,” Con said.It felt like the obvious conclusion, but then, he wasn’t a scientist.He was the equivalent of the muscle, or the risk taker.The guy who went ahead to find out things or take the first shots.
