Page 71 of Pretty Savage: Defy

Behind me, metal scrapes softly against metal.

“How long?” I ask.

“Longer if you keep talking.”

I hear a faint series of clicks, then the padlock opens in Thomson’s hand.

He holds it up with a satisfied expression.

I lift the latch. Rust flakes away beneath my fingers, but the hinges move without the groan I expect. The doors open smoothly, almost silently.

Thomson notices too.

“Those were oiled recently,” he says.

A narrow staircase descends into darkness. Cool air rises from below, carrying the faint smell of dirt and stone.

I hand Thomson one of the slim flashlights I shoved into my pocket before we left, then pull out the other. The concrete stairs are chipped along the edges but otherwise unremarkable. I go first, with Thomson right behind me.

“This reminds me of the Vault,” he whispers as we descend. “The rituals we did down there. Our initiation into manhood.”

I look back and find him touching the back of his shoulder, over the place where they branded both of us with the symbol of The Order. A cross with four arms of equal length. My own shoulder aches in sympathy, remembering the hot iron pressed into my skin.

He’s right. The cold air and stale mold are the same as in the Vault, but the metallic trace of iron and blood is missing. Instead, there’s the hint of something chemical here, like plastic mixed with cleaning solution.

We walk for a minute through a narrow hallway. There are industrial-style lights overhead, bare bulbs in plastic cages, but I don’t know how to turn them on, and I wouldn’t even if I did. If there’s someone ahead, I don’t want them to know we’re coming.

The beam of my flashlight moves over concrete walls painted a dull gray. Pipes run along the ceiling, disappearing through openings cut into the stone. We take a sharp turn and stop so abruptly that Thomson nearly walks into me.

Before us is a door.

Not an old one either. The surface is smooth and black, fitted perfectly into the surrounding wall without hinges or a visible handle. Beside it sits a rectangular glass panel with a flat surface. It lights up a faint blue when we approach.

Thomson steps closer. “That’s new.” He runs the flashlight over the frame without touching it. “This isn’t something someone bought at a hardware store and installed over the weekend.”

“No kidding.”

I glance back the way we came. The entrance is far enough behind us that daylight no longer reaches the hallway.

“What’s it doing under Father’s house?”

“Dunno.” He crouches and examines it. “This must be some kind of custom keypad. Not sure what it’s reading. Fingerprints, retinal scans, facial recognition. Probably some combination.”

“Can you open it?”

Thomson takes a compact device from his bag, attaches a narrow probe, and runs it along the underside of the panel. Lines of code move across the screen before vanishing and beginning again. He types, quick taps, then looks at the lock with anticipation, but nothing happens. After several attempts, Thomson sits back on his heels.

“It isn’t connected to the house network. Whoever installed it isolated the system and encrypted everything internally. It’s probably running a rotating code, biometric confirmation, or both. I can’t get inside.”

He removes another device, a black rectangle about twice the thickness of his phone, and presses it against the wall beside the frame.

“What’s that?”

“Through-wall radar. It can detect movement and breathing if anyone is close enough. Kind of like what fishermen use or the traffic control tower at an airport.”

A faint grid appears on the screen. Thomson adjusts the range, then waits while the radar scans whatever lies beyond the steel and concrete. The grid stays blank. No moving dots.

“No one close enough for it to detect,” he says.