Free The Forgotten Room by Lincoln Child

They gave the space a strange, anonymous feel. There was only one exit—a large, doorless arch directly to the south—and after finishing his reconnoiter Logan moved through it.
    He paused a moment to put down his duffel and page through the working blueprints and reports he had brought with him. Based on the construction schedule, the first job would—naturally enough—be the demo. One team of workmen had been tasked with demolishing the fixtures in preparation for a full-scale rebuilding. A second team of workmen had been given the rather more delicate job of tearing down certain non-load-bearing walls on the second floor to make way for what had been termed in the architectural specs “lateral corridor A” and “lateral corridor B”—the two new hallways off which the redesigned office and lab spaces would be constructed. The rest would follow later.
    Stepping into the space beyond the vestibule, Logan found himself in darkness once again, the only light being that which filtered in from the front office. He looked around, found another bank of lights, and turned on the switches. Nothing: clearly, the electricity had been turned off for the purposes of demolition. Switching the flashlight back on, he found he was standing in a seemingly roofless space. There were additional drop cloths on the floor, but here they had been wadded and twisted this way and that by the passage of numerous booted feet, and Logan could see the heavy dust that lay on the floorboards beneath. On all sides, ancient stones rose up around him: Delaveaux’s ceremonial henge. Hemmed in by walls, the liths seemed even larger than they actually were. Logan let his flashlight shine on them, angling its beamup toward the ceiling far above. They were rough-hewn, dark, tapering slightly toward their top edges. What events, good or ill, had they witnessed? Had they seen Richard III die in the nearby battle that marked the fall of the Plantagenets? Or older ceremonies, profane and dark? There was something about these silent sentinels that Logan found unsettling, and he was careful not to touch them as he moved on.
    Beyond the standing stones, a corridor led deeper into the wing. Logan moved down it until he reached a staircase, which he ascended. The second floor was a confused jumble of half-destroyed offices. Bare lights dangled from cords. The dust was heavier here, but it was primarily plaster dust, caused no doubt by the wholesale demolition of walls and nonstructural elements to make way for Strachey’s two parallel hallways. Standing where he was, Logan could make out the rough outlines of what must be lateral corridor A. It was visible, not so much from what had been built but from what had been torn away: a long, gaping hole, ripped out of offices and storage rooms and corridors, heading due south into the dark.
    With the aid of his flashlight and a compass, Logan consulted the work orders for the construction. The demo work for lateral corridor A was to come first, to be followed later by corridor B.
    He moved ahead slowly down the unfinished corridor, swinging the flashlight left and right. He was uncomfortably aware that he was in a construction zone; some of the half-destroyed walls and slanting ceiling beams were clearly less than stable. Not only was he without a hard hat, but he was investigating a space that had just been declared structurally unsound.
    He continued south for perhaps twenty yards, peering around with his flashlight, before his way was blocked by two tarps hanging from the ceiling to the floor, one blocking his way ahead and the other to the right. They had been nailed into place, and a hastily scrawled sign was fixed to the closest that read: HAZARDOUS AREA—OFF-LIMITS .
    He paused in the dust-heavy darkness, considering. Then,pulling a penknife from his pocket, he cut a small hole in the tarp ahead of him, thrust his light into it, and peered through.
    Clearly, this was where the demolition work had stopped.