Title: Closing Time

Summary: The Gasman does a final check around the deserted School facility before its demolition, and encounters old memories, not as dead as he'd thought when he'd decided to bury them.

Characters: The Gasman

Genre: Horror/General/Suspense

Rating: T

Chapter 5: Access

How the Itexicon Freight Elevator works:

With their infinite supply of sadistic imagination and questionably massive amount of funds, Itex put their heads together and came up with the simplest way they could think of to move large quantities of supplies, be they tools, parts, or multiple, mutant-occupied crates at one time.

The normal way this worked was, a worker would push a full trolley onto a marked section of seemingly-normal floor. The pressure pads would detect it before it got there, and the trolley would then sit on the lift itself. The clamps, one for each corner, acted as ten-foot bolts into the ground, and would have to be unlocked to move the lift at all. This was typically done at the start of the day, so everyone could use it without having to unlock it each time.

Still following? Great. From there, the pressure-pad would raise the guard rails, lower you down electronically, and spin something like a windlass in the middle of the lift. Equipped with air-brakes.

Voila. Simplicity. Push item onto floor, floor sinks down, instant access-tunnel to wherever you needed to go or be. The floor would simply sink from sight.

Of course, since there was no more power to the building, the only way to get down to the sub-level was manually.

The labs would have to wait.

The two bolts I'd been turning had finally reached their limit, a foot and a half out of the floor.

Jackson protested as I searched around the deserted unit for a bar. "Captain, it is highly-recommended that you let me send in backup," he said firmly. I tugged back on a bit of fallen shelving, listening to the metal groan as it was wrenched away from the contraption as easily as pulling the lid off a tuna can. The surge of effortless strength felt good, reassuring - I've shredded, popped, and folded tougher SUV's. "They have the supplies necessary, and we don't know what's down there. Plus, you'll likely have no reception - "

Wrrrrrrrnnnnnk. "Where's Donahue? The guy I talked to last time?" I grumbled, and straightened out the steel pole between my hand, boot, and floor. There. The windlass had holes, possibly for spokes in the event of an emergency. Maybe this could work.

"Sir," Jackson kept on, getting a little testy himself at my attitude, "There is no guarantee either, of your beacon being able to broadcast from that depth. And Agent Donahue will return from break shortly."

I fed the bar through the holes, and stepped over the now freely-bouncing lift to let up the other two clamps. It took a little coaxing, they not being in use for some time, but they eventually turned free from the concrete, one by one. "...Tell him...I won't...go too far. I got this. They're only access-tunnels."

"Wha - no - negative, Captain. You will have NO RECEPTION. AT ALL. You will be ALONE. I'm sending you a team."

Alone, un-armed, in the dark, with no idea what to expect.

Didn't THAT sound familiar.

I tested my foot on the lift. Not enough weight to make it sink. The flashlight roved around the storage unit, looking for a sizeable bit of cargo to activate the lock on the windlass.

Alone.

You have no idea what's down there.

Or worse, I might be trapped down there with no way to call for help: every bird, and every human's, worst nightmare.

Funny how reality will ruin any smidgeon of euphoria about something dangerous. I sat back on my haunches, my graying white wingtips sweeping the floor. Something below.

"A crowd is not appreciated. This is what I do, Agent." Since I was eight-years-old.

Further silence, followed by an exasperated sigh into my earpiece that made it crackle. "...Since you will be virtually on your own down there, AT LEAST audio-record everything you see. Any evidence or interesting items, pack them and log 'em. Your beacon and your uplink here to us will be useless," he conceded flatly. "I trust you have extra batteries?"

Snort. Like ammunition. "Lighten up, Jackson. You're making me nervous." I cast my eyes in the direction of the assorted, molding pile of empty crates. "Gasman out."

I severed the connection. And though I didn't like Jackson, (and he knew it,) I did feel a bit of guilt grappling with the excitement creeping at my scapulars...uh, wing bases...an odd combination. He didn't deserve my frustration. I really should be nicer to him, to people in general.

'Cause It might be the last time I ever hear from him, or anyone, again.

20:54.

I spent the next five minutes shoving and pulling and pushing around debris into the discarded containers, trying to get them to about forty pounds each. The scale needed to be at 200+ for the lift to go down, and though yours truly, at six-foot-nothing, a sixteen-foot wingspan, and wearing the AOTV plus backpack, barely amounted to the weight of the average human male (about 150 - 160 pounds). Yeah, I'm surprisingly very light, for a twenty-year-old.

A twenty-year-old human, anyway. Other programs outside of Itexicon keep telling me that I'm still growing, still trying to balance mass with proportions. Out of all of us in our happy Flock, I'd placed the shortest, just above eye-level to Max's sister, and dwarfed by everyone else's six-foot-plus frames.

I hauled on the last crate, fighting my disgust; looped a coil of old extension-cord around my arm, and jumped up on the lift, thinking of the advantages of being smaller. Eh. It wasn't like I had competition anymore, anyways.

The lift sagged, and the meter at the center creeped toward the ideal-mark. Then came an internal clank, and I began to turn both ends of the pole upon the windlass. The elevator itself finally began to sink.

Here we go.

This was an older model. I remember seeing more updated versions of these, like the ones built under Lendenheim upon my second visit - when automated, they not only sank down, but followed a high-powered track that would take you anywhere you needed to be within moments. This one, just sat thirty feet from ground-level and made you push whatever cargo you had down a set of mostly-straight-forward access tunnels.

The walls of the six-by-ten elevator shaft rose above me as I kept cranking, passing twelve feet. Just the tunnels. Probably nothing down there. It wasn't helping my nerves that I had to lay down the flashlight to keep both hands free.

Twelve feet.

Eighteen.

Twenty.

Lower and lower, deeper and deeper beneath the crust of the earth. Not that deep. Almost at thirty.

And shake that uncomfortable feeling that's trying to compare this with a coffin-wench, lowering down the casket into the ground. Ignore the nagging at the back of the skull telling you that those things are one-way trips only, just as enclosed, just as dark, just as terminally silent as this sub-level voyage.

Don't think about not being able to come back up, for whatever reason.

Don't think "buried alive".

Don't think "grave".

The bulging crates and their similarities to said coffins were not helping.

Twenty-five.

Crrrrnnnnnnnnnnkkkk...wunk. CRUNCH.

The lift stopped at thirty-feet down. I tilted my head back and squinted, for whatever good it would do. I could fly out. No biggie. That's an open space up there, not a closed one.

It's open.

It is.

The chilly breath of the opening beside me captured the rest of my frayed attention. Avian-audio, tuning in to what the eyes could not accurately judge in the pitch: the scrape of the air against sharp walls, concrete and unforgiving. Wind gusting lightly up something smooth, probably the floor of the tunnel itself, squeezed into it by some other open aperture, uneven and clear.

The floor slopes. It only made sense. Quietly (but unsure of why), I untied the extension cord, and wrapped it firmly around the windlass to its external locks on the floor, to be sure some unnatural act of God didn't make it return to the surface without me - then shook up the spray can, and drew a big orange circle onto the lift. With an artistic flick of the wrist, a capital 'G' formed itself in the center.

And then, as an after-thought, the time: 20:54.

The marking burned to life.

And, armed with my flashlights and paint, I stepped off into the throat of the unknown.

"Ding," I muttered.