The air inside the shack smelled like mildew and decayed wood and damp earth. There was no floor—just a dirt surface overgrown with ferns and a few other plants. Things that thrived in darkness. The brush filled the space except for a long, empty rectangle in the middle: a set of stairs like the kind at Station 14, leading down.

For the next minute, everything else was the same as Station 14, too. The stairs. The black steel door at the bottom. The keypad next to it.

“Five sevens in a row,” Dani said.

She punched them in, and the lock thudded open. The two of them pushed the heavy door inward and stepped past it.

The space beyond was instantly familiar: a short corridor lined with grey ceramic tile, and black stenciled writing on the wall:

UNITED STATES D.O.D.

ASHLAND-STATION 9

LIMA 6 CLEARANCE REQUIRED

BEYOND THIS POINT

“Lima six,” Sam said. “We’re moving up in the world.”

Dani crossed to the opposite door, which no doubt led to a flight of stairs going down. She opened it and stepped through ahead of Sam—then gasped and flinched and jumped back, crashing into him.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered. She put a hand to her chest, like her heart had suddenly kicked into overdrive.

Sam shone his light through the door and saw the reason.

There was no flight of stairs there. Just a room, ten feet by ten, with a square pit dead-centered in its floor. The pit was probably five by five, and plunged out of sight into pitch-blackness.

There was no railing around it. Another step and Dani would have gone over the edge.

“I don’t imagine safety codes were around when they built this place,” Sam said.

“You’d think basic common sense would do.”

“You’d think.”

She took another few seconds to catch her breath, then shook her head and stepped through the opening again. She moved to the edge of the pit, carefully, and dropped to a knee. Sam knelt beside her, and they aimed their flashlights down into it.

The hole was a concrete-lined shaft dropping away straight down, with a metal ladder bolted to one wall. The shaft’s depth had to be two hundred feet. Their light beams didn’t actually reach the bottom, but they could see the bottom anyway—the pit had its own light source down there, some kind of bulb that shone as simply a bright orange pinpoint.

“How abandoned could it be if the lights are still on?” Sam asked.

He realized he’d whispered it.

“Very good question,” Dani said—also whispering. Then: “What do you think we’ll find down there?”

“Your question wins,” Sam said.

Dani managed a nervous laugh. “I’m not big on heights, you know.”

“Good motivation to not fall,” Sam said. He turned off his flashlight, pocketed it, and took hold of the top rung.