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I hang my head without arguing. “They’re okay,” he says. “I saw them right before you woke up in the hospital.”
“I know,” I agree, remembering a conversation I shouldn’t have seen. I can’t push the words back into my mouth, but Alex doesn’t ask questions, assuming he mentioned it to me or he’s occupied with other thoughts.
We’re led past the noises of metal on metal until reaching a group of men standing in a circle. Lori waits with Frederick, and we both smile at each other. There are two other adherents, but I’ve never seen them before, not even in the dream last night. They scowl at the pair of us walking toward them, clearly upset by our presence.
Sam’s further down the hall with a few others, his hands behind his back. He doesn’t see me until someone calls out Alex's name.
His expression changes in seconds from joy to anger until he’s stoic, blankly staring at everyone without feeling.
“To what do we owe the pleasure?” Sam deadpans as our group approaches. Luke steps out from the circle and looks at Lori, letting one side of his lips raise at seeing her. She smiles back, and when he greets me, I exhale, the weight in my chest lifting at the sight of everyone healthy and well.
“His eminency tasked us with a progress report on the reparation project,” Frederick says. Luke subtly rolls his eyes, and Lori widens hers in his direction. I hold back my laugh, crossing my arms around my middle to control myself. “We meet with him later today.”
“Today?” Sam asks.
“Yes, Mr. Rivera,” Alex answers. “Today. All of us.”
It’s an answer to a question Sam can’t ask in front of the crowd. He orders several men in different directions, each word clipped and focused. Luke and several others stay with our group, and he instructs us to follow him down a hallway and into a workroom. There are papers everywhere, along with some scattered tools and a table.
We step inside, and Frederick points at Lori and me, directing us to empty chairs on the other side of the room. We’re too far to see anyone, but I can hear them, and when I crouch down on the floor, I see their shoes underneath the cabinets and shelves that block our view.
They speak in words and acronyms I don’t understand. Lori and I stay silent, trying to stay awake through this conversation.
“The sketches are over there,” Sam says.
“Why do you leave such sensitive material unlocked!” one man yells at Sam. Those words perk me up, and I rise to stand. Lori does as well, but I motion for her to stay still.
Sam’s footsteps echo, and the sound of rustling pages being shown to someone is clear. “This is a workspace on a workday,” Sam explains. “The room stays locked.”
There’s a grunt of acceptance, and I take a hesitant step toward them to hear better.
“You see it here, the issue we’re having. Closing the tunnel is impossible. The best we can manage is to seal the entrance. It keeps weakening from the top, increasing the opening.” Sam comes into view, holding the large drawing against his chest and pointing to an area toward the bottom.
“That’s not what his eminency requires,” Frederick says. “He doesn’t want a partial tunnel, nor does he want it incomplete because of your incompetence.”
“It’s forty stories,” Sam says, shaking the page against his body. “They were working on this for years and displacing the soil and debris through piping. I don’t have the material to fill it unless we go above ground.”
“He won’t allow that,” Alex says. “And we understand.”
“We do not,” Frederick argues. He pulls at Alex’s arm. “We can’t tell him it’s not possible.”
“And we won’t tell him that.” Alex places his palm on top of Frederick’s, but he doesn’t brush it away. He taps his hand, calming him. “We’ll tell him we need surface material to do so and let him sort out his priorities.”
“What’s going on?” Lori whispers in my ear. I heard her coming up behind me but didn’t stop her, wanting to hear every word of their conversation.
“We need those pages,” I tell her. She doesn’t ask why, and I’m not sure I know the reason. I keep thinking of the red floor on the tablet, Alex’s words about the cave in, and this nagging notion it’s our way out.
Frederick huffs, resting his hands on his hips and looking down at the floor. Sam places the drawings back down on the table and folds them until they are the size of a sheet of paper. I narrow my eyes while he does this, but he doesn’t look my way, just babbles on about checkpoints and engineering garbage.
We found a stack of dry computer paper on the island, and Sam would use them to draw out his plans for his next project. More than once, I tried to fold up the large sheets of paper he mended together, cleaning up our small space. Every time, he would groan and explain that the pages need to stay crisp and open so he can read the small writing, lines, and angles.
But a project that could get him killed, he folds?
His actions only firm my resolve that I need my hands on them. “We need those,” I whisper again to Lori, pointing in the direction of the sheet Sam folded.
“Got it,” she says.
Sam ushers the men to visit the project site, and Frederick and Alex come to collect us. We move back to our seats as their footsteps draw closer. Most of the others are outside when they reach us, and in the hustle to act as if we never left our chairs, I don’t have time to form a plan.
