Free The Darwin Elevator by Jason Hough

level, and let the station speak for itself. Room after room filled not with furniture but supplies.
    Steel canisters of compressed air, stacked in neat rows, filled one section.
    “Level three is all food,” he said. “Four is water, though we’re behind on that front.”
    Kelly kept silent as they drifted along. Finally she said, “It’s like a bomb shelter.”
    “Astute observation,” he said.
    “How long have you been hoarding this stuff?”
    Neil almost told his rehearsed lie, the one he’d told Tania. Such deception, however innocent, would not work with Kelly. “Almost two years.”
    “Clearly you know something I don’t. What’s going on?”
    I’ll know soon enough, he thought. “Call it a hunch. Change is in the air.”
    The woman laughed softly. “Why show me now?”
    “Because of room seventeen,” he said. When she raised an eyebrow, he laughed, too. “This way.”
    A special lock adorned the door to room seventeen. “Eight seven four four,” he said aloud as he tapped the code. “Don’t forget.”
    With a thud the lock disengaged. Neil pushed the door open and waved Kelly inside.
    She gasped at the sight within. The large room, intended for recreation according to the station plan, instead served as an armory. Stacks of hard-shell cases in army green or police black, lethal contents packed within. Many months of secret purchases and smuggled shipments led to the cache.
    Kelly moved inside with some trepidation. She drifted to the nearest box and threw back the catches. “Sonton 90. Holo sight, mil-spec. Excellent handgun,” she said.
    “So I’m told.”
    She ran her hand over the row of identical black pistols. “I get it now.”
    Neil waited.
    “You don’t know what half this stuff is, do you?”
    “I’m not even sure any of it works,” he said. “I’m going to be asking more from you, Kelly, in the months ahead. For starters, I need to know who in your self-defense classes is showing the most promise. I’m also going to give you a list of my staff who have had military experience.”
    She stifled a response when Neil held up his hand.
    “Prep them,” he went on. “And send the most promising ones here, to train and plan.”
    “Plan for what?”
    Neil grimaced. “I don’t know, yet. I’d tell you if I did.”
    “Horseshit,” she said. “I know you, Neil. You wouldn’t do all this without a goal in mind.”
    Every possible future Neil could imagine, at least those with a happy ending, required people like Kelly to be at his side. And he trusted her, more than anyone perhaps. He’d waited long enough to let someone in.
    “Here it is, then,” he said. “The Builders are coming back. The next phase in their plan.”
    “When?” she asked without hesitation.
    “I can’t tell you that, yet—”
    “Wait,” she said. “What do you mean, plan ?”
    He spread his hands. “A figure of speech,” he said. Slip of the tongue, more like . “All I know is they seem to be on some kind of accelerating cycle, and it’s about to come around again. Tania Sharma is working on the details.”
    Kelly glanced around at the crates of weapons. “And you plan to fight them? With a handful of crusty, out-of-shape infantry?”
    “I don’t mean to fight anyone,” Neil said. “My plan is for this station to serve as a lifeboat, in case we need to clear out for a while. Don’t look at me like that. We don’t know what they intend to do this time, and I won’t let the people I love perish up here if the bastards mean to finish us off. Call it hiding, call it cowardice, I don’t care.”
    She searched his eyes, her face as stiff as a cold breeze.
    “I want people who can fight,” Neil added, “in case we have to battle our way here. In case we have to fend off a rush of desperate stowaways.”
    “Okay, okay,” she said. “I get the idea. Turn my students into fighters. Is that it?”
    “No,” Neil said. “First I need you to help me figure out what we have here. And