Page 85 of Inkpot Gods

“No,” says Judy. “Roman concrete doesn’t burn. We could light everything else down here on fire, but then there’s a decent chance that something in one of the workspaces would go up and just become some sort of fucked-up eternal flame.”

“We’re not turning Berkeley into Silent Hill, so no, we’re not setting the lab on fire,” says Roger firmly. “Kelpie, I’m sorry, and we’ll try to find another way to make the place less terrifying for you. Maybe I can convince the molecular bonds in the concrete that they want to be flexible and turn the whole thing into mush. Or something. We’ll figure it out.”

“We better,” says Kelpie, and starts moving again, clattering down the stairs toward the bottom.

Lilianne looks up. The stairwell is an endless concrete column between them and the surface, which is so far away at this point that she can’t even say for sure where the ceiling is. The alchemists did this. They drove this spire of emptiness through the heart of Berkeley, and not long ago, she thought they were right to have done it: that anything could be justified in the endless quest for knowledge. Now she understands a little better. Now she can see that sometimes a void is just a void, and not a request to be filled: not everything needs to be codified. Not everything needs to be understood.

Not everything needs to be known.

From below her, Kelpie exclaims with what sounds like delight. Lilianne turns. Kelpie has reached smooth, solid ground, no more stairs descending, and is holding a white-painted door open on a gloomy space beyond. It’s not totally dark on the other side of the door: some sort of auxiliary lighting is clearly still operational. That’s about the only good thing Lilianne can say about the situation.

“This is the main lab,” says Kelpie. “Through here is where I used to work with Margaret and the rest of her research team. That means hydroponics should be two levels up, and the menagerie is a level above that.”

“The what?” asks Dodger, in a voice like ice.

“The … menagerie…” says Kelpie, voice going smaller with each word. “It’s where they kept the animals for experimenting on. I hope someone got them out before the lab shut down.”

“If they didn’t, that’s not going to be a very pleasant floor,” says Erin.

“I’ll go,” says Dodger. She turns back to the stairs and lopes up several of them, Roger and Judy following after.

Kelpie is already moving toward the door Artemis holds open for her, and Erin hesitates, looking to Smita, who shakes her head and says, “I’ll be fine,” as she gestures at Lilianne.

A bubble of pride forms in Lilianne’s chest—Smita trusts her to keep them safe—before bursting and leaving her awash in cold reality. Smita may trust her, but she has no special powers, no bow made of moonlight or capacity to command the laws of reality. She can mix a few simple potions, if she has the ingredients in front of her, and she can understand the way alchemists tend to look at things, the angles they use to approach the world. They have backup in the building. Will that backup be close enough to help them if the etiäinen decide to come again? If they get cornered?

She doesn’t know, and she doesn’t want to learn the hard way, but she’s unfortunately concerned that she will.

“Hydroponics?” asks Smita brightly, and there’s nothing Lilianne can really do but agree, and follow her back up two flights of stairs, to the closed door to the hydroponics floor.

She’s not sure what she expects to find on the other side. Bodies, maybe, or auf still shuffling through their assigned tasks even as their unmaintained bodies begin to unravel; dissolution and decay. Instead, they step into a spotless, almost futuristic-looking space, which rapidly becomes a bright paradise of glass and chrome as the lights come on, only buzzing for a moment before they settle into a warm, steady glow. Even before the panel lights become active, the room is lit by a purple wash from the grow lights that are still visible through the forest of uncontrolled greenery that has consumed the various garden beds.

“If we told the stoners about this place, they’d move in and declare themselves an independent city-state,” says Smita, sounding awed. She steps forward, wide-eyed as she tries to take everything in.

Lilianne follows more carefully, scanning the markings on the walls and around the bases of the contained growth tanks. She recognizes most of the sigils. They’re for growth and stability, and while they’ve been combined in some truly innovative ways, they’re not enormously surprising. She can absolutely see how these combinations would result in healthy, dependable growth.

“They must have some sort of irrigation system that’s still running,” says Smita. “Maybe it’s tapping in to the water we had to wade through the first time we came here? Or maybe—do alchemists have a method for extracting water from the air? Normal people can do that with the right machines, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising if alchemists could do it too.”

“There are filtration systems that can be put in place when needed,” says Lilianne. “This place looks like it was modeled on Reed’s primary labs, so it would make sense if they were extracting water somehow. Or the plants may have just been held in functional stasis.”

“I don’t think so.” Smita indicates a tank where the sides have been distorted and partially broken down by the vigorous growth of the bush inside. It looks like a raspberry of some kind, the individual canes of its central structure sagging low under the weight of ripe purplish-red fruit. It looks absolutely delicious.

Lilianne would sooner eat her own hands. She shakes her head as she turns away from the temptation.

“So they were still operational when the rest of the lab shut down,” she says. “But where is everyone?” She’s looking down in her effort to avoid the fruit. That’s why she spots the first flash of white, and moves toward it, nudging vines aside with her foot as she reveals the discarded lab coat crumpled on the floor.

Finding one is like unlocking a hidden eye puzzle. As soon as she sees it and realizes what it is, she starts to spot other flashes of white buried among the greenery.

“I think … I found the alchemists,” she says, in a small, tight voice.

“Hmm?” asks Smita.

Lilianne indicates the first coat, and waits for the horror of the moment to sink in. The silent plants suddenly seem less inanimate than they do poised, like predators that might strike at any moment.

“I don’t think any of them made it out of here,” says Lilianne.

“We should go.”

“Yes.” Something falls over deeper in the lab, something small that makes a clinking noise when it hits the floor. Lilianne feels Smita’s hand questing for her own, and she takes it, interlacing their fingers. “We should go now.”