The shaft turned out to be 240 rungs deep, whatever that came to in feet. Thirty rungs up from the bottom, the shaft’s four concrete walls flared out to form a pyramid-shaped open space. The ladder continued straight down through the middle of that space, to where its footings were anchored in the floor. Sam reached the bottom and stepped off, followed by Dani a second later.

The orange bulb they’d seen from above was right there at the ladder’s base: a plastic-shrouded safety light set into the concrete. The floor of the chamber was twenty by twenty feet square. The space was featureless except for a single door on the west wall, and a block of text beside it, in the now-familiar stencil font:

THIS STATION DECOMMISSIONED

NO ENTRY PERMITTED WITHOUT

CASE-SPECIFIC AUTHORIZATION

The stern warning was backed up by a set of heavy-duty steel locks and beams across the door. There were no number pads or keyholes to be seen—whoever had barricaded this door had wanted it to stay shut forever.

But it hadn’t.

Someone had drilled and cut their way through every one of the locking measures. The metal shavings were strewn at the foot of the door, which itself hung an inch open in its frame. Sam could just make out a hint of light from beyond it, milky white instead of orange. It flickered erratically, like an old fluorescent bulb running down.

Beside him he saw Dani shiver.

For the longest moment neither of them moved. Sam listened for any sound of activity—any sound at all—from the other side of the door. He heard nothing.

He took a step toward it, Dani moving just behind him. It was easy to be silent on the concrete. Three more steps put him right beside the frame. He leaned forward and put his ear directly to the inch-wide gap in the door. He listened for thirty seconds.

Silence, as dead as he’d ever heard it.

He drew back and glanced at Dani. Her eyes were full of the same uncertainty he felt. Then her eyebrows made a shrug: now or never.

He nodded, put his hands to the door and began to push it open—slowly.

An inch per second.

For the first five inches it moved smoothly, with no resistance or sound.

Then one of the hinges groaned.

In any normal place, full of background noises, the sound would’ve escaped all notice. In the crypt silence of Station 9, it might as well have been a stack of dinner plates shattering.

It echoed through the shaft around Sam and Dani—and also through the unseen space beyond the door.

Both of them froze.

They locked eyes and didn’t breathe.

They waited.

Ten seconds passed.

No sound of a response.

Twenty seconds. Thirty.

Nothing happened.