I follow him into the metal-walled room. It’s long and narrow; the walls are thick steel with benches and shelves molded into the metal. There are cans of food and bottles of water lining the shelves, along with flashlights and a few books. In the far right corner, there is a toilet that is reminiscent of the metal toilets in the Loop.

“How long did it take you to build this?” I ask.

“About two weeks. Me and Pod made it. When we first got here it was a lot easier to get supplies from the city. Happy hadn’t mobilized its armies properly yet, so we got all the steel and plumbing easily enough.”

Igby leans over to a sink and spins a tap. Fresh water comes out and drains down a sink.

“This is really impressive!” I say.

“Yeah, I’m really good at this shit,” Igby replies, shrugging. “I have to fix a glitch with the door, but other than that this place is basically bombproof. It even has an intercom so you can speak to people in the main room.” He presses a button on the wall and I hear a microphone click on.

“Let’s hope we never need this room,” I say.

Igby nods and then leads the way out of the panic room, up the stairs, and back into the library. We pass by some ancient radio equipment that Igby tells me Pander has been using to communicate with survivors from other regions.

“How many survivors are there?” I ask.

“Fewer and fewer every day,” Igby replies. “Happy’s soldiers are taking them out by the hundreds. Smilers get some of them too. Regions fourteen and eighty-three went quiet yesterday.”

I think about this, what it means: rebels being killed for trying to stand up against Happy’s plan to eradicate the world of humans. Killed for fighting against Happy’s assessment that humanity is a cancer. Killed for daring to exist in the new age of machine logic.

We move over to a long desk. One of the oldest pieces of technology I have ever seen outside of a museum sits in the middle of the counter. It’s an old desktop computer with an honest-to-god console tower beside an outdated liquid crystal display monitor.

“What a piece of junk,” I say as we approach.

“This piece of junk is the reason you’re alive. It’s how we knew where you were being kept, how we got Pander inside the Block and her iris recognized on the scanners. It’s how we got you out, and it’s how we’re scrambling the signal of all Mosquitoes within the three-mile radius.”

“About that radius,” I reply, “isn’t that dangerous? Won’t they just attack the center?”

“Oh, Luka, Luka, Luka, it’s an oscillating radius; the signal is bounced off several satellites … it doesn’t matter, I’ve got it all figured out.”