Free Winterbay by J. Barton Mitchell Page B

dangerously as Mira stepped onto it, followed by Reiko, and walked toward the door inset in the giant cylinder. Even this close, the huge contraption still stretched out of sight, disappearing into the dark beyond the reach of their lights. Yet the door itself was anticlimactic at best. It was just a door, a big, thick one, but that was all. Somehow, though, it made the other side all the more ominous …
    Both girls stared at the door warily. “After you,” Reiko intoned.
    Mira frowned and grabbed the latch, yanked it down, and started pushing the giant hatch inward.
    It was so heavy, it barely moved. Reiko joined in, pushing along with Mira, and old, rusted hinges groaned as the whole thing yawned backward, revealing absolute, pure blackness beyond.
    The girls hesitated, staring into the shadows. Then, together, they stepped into the interior of the Machine.
    The darkness was thick and tangible. Their footsteps echoed strangely as they moved.
    Mira jumped at a series of sudden loud thuds. With each sound, a different circular swath of fluorescent lights flickered to life, one after the other, rising up and filling the huge cylinder all the way to the top. Some of them sparked and died. Others remained dark, long since dead, but most worked, and they filled the interior with the hum of electricity.
    Mira tensed, expecting explosions, or lasers, or a giant bladed pendulum for all she knew … but there was nothing.
    Just the hum of the lights.
    The walls were circular, a combination of bare metal and rust, and there was something else, Mira noticed. The interior of the Machine was smaller than the outside. There was a gap between the interior walls and the exterior. A big one. It was probably where the Machine’s hydraulics rested.
    The floor was metal like the walls, and, most strikingly, in the center of the room was a giant grooved column, like a huge cog, that rose up from the floor and stretched all the way to the top of the shaft, two hundred feet or more above them.
    Other than that, the giant room was completely empty. Mira wasn’t sure what to think.
    Reiko moved farther in, and Mira slipped off her pack and dropped it in front of the door. It groaned as it began to shut, wedging against the pack, unable to close. Reiko turned back to Mira and studied her curiously.
    “I’m guessing the door’s the trigger,” Mira explained. “When it shuts, whatever’s gonna happen … is probably gonna happen.”
    Reiko thought about it, nodded in agreement, then turned back around. Mira crept cautiously forward, her eyes scanning the walls. They weren’t as smooth as she had first thought. They were individual panels of metal, and she could see the seams between them. There was something else, too: the faint outlines of rectangular slots in the walls, all different sizes and lengths. It looked like they could open—but there was no indication what might come out.
    “Look,” Reiko said behind her. The girl was studying the giant grooved column in the center of the room. She pointed to something up and down its length. More slots that could open and shut, but, unlike the ones on the walls, these were all circular. Seeing them made Mira’s nervousness begin to rise.
    “There’s more on the walls,” Mira replied. “Whatever it is, it’s gonna come at us sideways.”
    “Yeah,” Reiko replied.
    Mira studied the room more closely. Something was wrong about it all, her instincts told her. Something about the environment itself didn’t make sense. She tried to force her mind to make the connection, to figure out what it was. It only took a second.
    “If this place has really killed dozens of people,” she slowly said, “where are all the bodies?”
    Reiko studied the spotless floors of the Machine, seeing Mira’s point. “You’re right. Hell, there’s not even any dust.” She circled the room back toward the door, thinking. “We’re on the eastern side of the city, I think.”
    “So?”
    “So, look