I finish my business and automatically go to the sink. It sputters for a few seconds before ash-filled water runs out. Despite the grey color of the water, ash is actually pretty clean; it just looks nasty. I wash my hands and face before returning to Aerin in the corridor.
“Better?” she asks.
“I will be when you tell me what the hell this is.” I hand her the flashlight.
“We’ll have plenty of time for that,” she says. “We need to get to the other side, and that’s going to take a while.”
“Any reason you can’t start now?” I follow her as she starts back down the hall.
“Other than not really knowing where to start, no. That’s my main issue at the moment.”
“How about starting with what this place is.”
“Up ahead are living quarters for the residents,” she tells me. “Let’s get there first. We need supplies and probably some rest. I’ll try to explain when we get there.”
We walk for a full ten minutes down the straight corridor. We pass other rooms with the same, abandoned look, similar to the one we started in. The air is cool but warmer than outside and has a stale, recirculated odor I remember from windowless buildings in the capital city.
The main corridor still continues with no end in sight, but Aerin suddenly changes direction and heads down a wide auxiliary hall with a tiled floor. The hallway ends with a double doorway, sans any actual doors. The large room beyond the doorway is lined with bunk beds topped with thin, partially destroyed plastic mattresses.
“This was used to house all the researchers,” Aerin says softly. “Through the door in the back is a kitchen. A few canned goods are in there. You hungry?”
“I’m a Naught,” I reply instinctively. “I’m always hungry.”
Aerin glances over her shoulder and raises an eyebrow at me again.
“What?” I ask.
“You don’t have to pretend with me, Talen.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You want me to call you Theodore instead?”
I glare at her. No one ever called me that, not even when I was a child. It was always just “Theo,” but I’m not about to tell her that.
Aerin walks through the door and into the next room. She pauses for a moment as she glances at me and then flicks a switch on the wall, and the room lights up with a yellow-gold glow.
The area is set up like an efficiency apartment, complete with a kitchenette. Along one wall is one of those beds that fold up into a couch during the day, and a dresser sits beside it. A flat pillow and blanket lie on top of the bed and have clearly been used recently. Perpendicular to the bed is a desk complete with a computer monitor. A folding table and two folding metal chairs sit in the center of the room, near the kitchen area. In one corner, a shelf is filled with books.
The room is remarkably clean compared to the other areas of the complex, and I wonder how long it took her to get the grime out of here. I don’t see any dirt or dust anywhere in the room. I’m accustomed to everything being covered in ash, and when I take a deep breath, I even notice the difference in the air.
I look over at Aerin as she pulls her hood off her head. In the yellow, artificial light, she looks completely different than she did outside in the usual, grey haze of ash-filled skies. I’m reminded of the quick change from black and white to color during The Wizard of Oz, and I feel like I’m seeing her for the first time.
Her rich, brown hair falls over her shoulders and down her back in thick waves. Her eyes are clearly bright green in this light—like the eyes of a cat—and her skin glows with the kind of healthy complexion rarely seen in the valley.
“Wow.” I quickly look away from her, directing my attention at the lights themselves instead of her. I blink a few times as my eyes adjust to the brightness and try to recall the last time I was in a place with actual electricity. I look up at the ceiling and the recessed light bulbs spaced evenly across it. “Where does the electricity come from?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” she says. “The map shows a generator room, but the entrance to it has collapsed. Whatever the power source is, it’s still working for this room.”
“What about the other rooms?”
“I’ve tried all the ones I’ve gone into,” Aerin says, “but as far as I know, this one is the only room that has working electricity. I assume it’s set up on its own circuit with a different power source from the rest of the complex.”
She walks over to the desk, drops her pack beside it, and places her hand on top of the monitor. I drop my pack next to hers and continue to look around, astounded that such a place existed all this time while I remained oblivious in the valley.
“No computer now, but I think this is where communication back to the capital might have been.”
“Communication?” I place my hands over my face for a moment and shake my head before looking back to her. I don’t even know where to start with my questions.