Chapter 127

Chapter 127

Once the gas detector arrived, it was carefully lowered deep into the opening to take readings.

When the results came back, Frank let out a breath of relief. "Oxygen levels are normal. Doesn't look like there's anything seriously wrong down there."

While they waited for the protective gear to arrive, he turned to Noah. "Didn't we already sweep the entire site? How did we miss this hole?"

Before Noah could answer, Quinn gave an awkward smile and spoke up. "That's actually partly my fault."

"The ground-penetrating radar has limited range. I rewrote the program to try to pick up more."

"But the algorithm I wrote prioritizes echoes that look very different from natural structures. At really deep levels, the signal degrades so badly that it usually just gets filtered out as noise."

Frank let out a tired sigh. He understood now — their equipment simply wasn't advanced enough to catch something hidden this far down.

He finished putting on the protective gear and was about to head down when Milo suddenly grabbed his hand.

"Frank, can I come with you?"

Frank frowned and looked at Noah. "Didn't I already have someone take him outside and keep an eye on him? How did he get back here?"

"I ran back on my own." Milo's voice was urgent, stubborn. "I heard something calling my name from down there. Can I go?"

Frank shook his head. "No. You're too young. I can't keep you safe down there. Stay up here and wait."

With that, he tied the safety rope around his waist and began slowly climbing down, using the rusted ladder bolted to the shaft wall.

He wasn't sure how long it took, but he finally reached the bottom. Below was a corridor running east to west — about three feet wide and six feet tall, barely enough room for one person.

The walls were bare concrete, never painted. The floor was covered in sound-absorbing carpet that swallowed every footstep. The silence was total.

Frank frowned. It was pitch black down here. He'd already switched on the glow stick he'd brought, but its range was limited, and the darkness ahead seemed to go on forever.

He counted the time quietly in his head. About five more minutes of walking brought him to the end of the corridor.

There was a stainless steel door at the end, fitted with a circular fingerprint lock. The screen was dead — no sign of power at all.

He pulled out a small pulse emitter he'd brought along and pressed it against the lock.

Two seconds later, the lock went completely dead. The door slowly swung inward with a low mechanical thud.

Behind it was a circular room — he estimated about thirty feet across. In the center stood a transparent cylindrical chamber, something like a cultivation pod, but completely empty. A few blood-stained tubes hung from its inner walls. The sight made his stomach turn.

Several pieces of equipment lined the walls, most of them around head height. Frank picked up an operations manual nearby and flipped through a few pages.

All of it was old — models from more than a decade ago, their casings thick with dust. That meant this place had been abandoned for at least ten years.

He slowly scanned the room and noticed another door on the far side. It looked like iron, and the surface had already started to rust and flake.

It took real effort to pry it open.

The moment it swung free, Frank understood why Milo had said she stopped.

Behind the door was a tiny room — square, narrow, shaped like a coffin standing upright.

And inside that cramped space stood an old cryo-chamber, its surface covered in a thick layer of white frost. The lid was semi-transparent. A girl lay inside with her eyes closed, perfectly still, as though she'd been sleeping forever.

Frank's breath caught. He stepped closer and realized the frost on the outer shell had already started to melt.

He didn't hesitate. He turned and ran back the way he came.

Someone who'd been frozen for that long couldn't simply be thawed out without warning — the cells wouldn't have time to reactivate properly. It would be fatal. He wasn't a specialist in this. He needed to get closer to the shaft entrance where the signal was stronger, avoid the connection cutting in and out, and reach someone who knew what to do.

Ten minutes later, he contacted Jon and Isla separately using the specialized communicator, got the exact procedure he needed, then turned and walked back toward the cryo-chamber.

Three minutes later, he found the red emergency button on the outside of the unit and pressed it without hesitation.

The chamber let out a low hum. Then the thick frost on the outer shell began to melt — slowly and steadily.

Five minutes later, he watched the color return to the girl's face, shifting from paper-white to a pale porcelain. He let out a long breath.

Two minutes after that, her chest began to rise and fall, faintly but visibly.

When the indicator light on the outside of the chamber finally shifted from harsh red to a soft green, the lid eased open. The girl slowly opened her eyes.

Her irises were deep brown. At first her gaze was unfocused. She blinked for a while before she finally found Frank and locked onto him.

"Who are you?" Her voice was raw, scraped-out, like gravel.

"Someone who's going to get you out of here." Frank kept his expression calm and extended his hand.

The girl tilted her head and studied him for a moment, then placed her hand in his.

Frank carried her on his back and retraced the route out. On the way up, he used the rope to secure her firmly to himself so she wouldn't slip.

Quinn had been waiting at the opening the whole time. When she saw them climb out, she rushed over to help Frank.

Her lips trembled slightly as she stared at the girl. "There was actually a person down there?"

She'd vaguely heard Frank communicating with someone while he was at the bottom, but hadn't caught the details, so she had no idea there was a cryo-chamber underground.

Frank gave her a quick rundown of everything he'd found.

Quinn's eyes went wide. "A lab like that — the walls would have been built with signal shielding. No wonder we couldn't pick anything up."

She was about to say more when she noticed Milo standing nearby, staring at the girl with an unusually fixed, intense look.

The girl was sitting on the ground a short distance away, watching Milo with equal curiosity. The two kids just looked at each other across the space between them. Something about it felt strange.

Quinn sensed the odd tension and was about to say something, but the girl spoke first.

"You're weak." She said it matter-of-factly, with a slight frown. "But you saved me. Thank you."

Milo pressed his lips together. He didn't seem bothered by being called weak — there was something else on his mind. "How could I hear you calling for help?"

The girl blinked. She tilted her head and thought about it. Then she shook her head slowly. "I don't remember."

Frank's expression shifted. That answer implied she had known at some point — and had since forgotten.

"You look young — fifteen, sixteen maybe." Quinn's voice was gentle, her eyes curious. "Where's your family?"

"I don't have any." The girl said it plainly, no emotion behind it at all.

Quinn's expression softened with sympathy. "Then what's your name?"

"Test subject seventeen." The girl answered and then looked around, taking in her surroundings with open curiosity, as if the answer was the most ordinary thing in the world.

The others went quiet. Their faces changed.

Test subject seventeen. That meant there had been at least sixteen others before her. And she herself had been part of an experiment that ended over a decade ago. So how far back did it actually go? When had any of this started?

"Noah." Frank's voice was low and flat, his eyes cold. "Look into Mortimer. And his father."

The experiment had ended more than ten years ago — but by then, this land had already belonged to the Mortimer family. So why had they known nothing about a hidden lab sitting underneath it?