"Hum..."
A low, powerful hum came from inside the door, followed by the hiss of compressed gas being released.
A moment later, the seemingly indestructible alloy door shuddered, then slowly slid inward, opening a gap just wide enough for one person to squeeze through sideways.
A rush of even staler air poured out through the crack.
Lorenzo let out a long breath and leaned against the wall.
He looked at Calista, his eyes flickering.
"The door's open."
"We did it!" Turner whispered.
Lorenzo gave an elegant but not-quite-proper bow. "At your service, my lady."
Calista ignored the act and nodded to Leah.
Leah was the first to turn sideways and slip through the door, her gun sweeping quickly over the space ahead.
A moment later, her voice came from inside. "Clear. But... you'd better come in and see this."
The others squeezed in one by one.
Flashlights and headlamps lit up the space ahead, and everyone froze at the sight before them.
Behind the door was an enormous circular hall with an astonishingly high ceiling.
Underfoot was a dark metal floor as smooth as a mirror. Overhead, a complex grid of structures and all kinds of pipes stretched across the ceiling.
Around the hall were several tiers of metal walkways, each connecting to numbered alloy doors or tempered glass doors.
The whole place carried a cold, futuristic feel, completely unlike the shabby disguise on the surface.
And yet this grand hall now lay in deathly silent darkness.
Only the beams of their flashlights illuminated the dust-covered control consoles.
"Damn," Carver muttered. "This place... it really does look like a secret base from a sci-fi movie."
"Sentinel Station. We found it." Calista took a deep breath, forcing down the shock in her chest as her eyes began to burn with intensity.
Just as Calista's team approached the structure in the center of the hall that looked like a main control console, a faint sound came from above their heads.
"Click."
It was like some kind of switch had been triggered.
Immediately after, the LED strips embedded along the walls of the circular hall flickered several times. Then, starting nearby and spreading outward, they lit up one after another with a ghostly blue glow.
Not all of them came on, but it was enough to drive away most of the darkness and reveal the magnificent, dead underground facility before their eyes.
At the same time, the huge screen on the central control console flickered with static a few times before a line of white text suddenly appeared.
[Backup power activated. Welcome back, Sentinel Station-B3.]
The heavy airlock door slowly closed behind them, swallowing the last trace of light from the upper passage.
The world seemed to shrink and reshape itself around them.
"Stay in formation. Keep watch." Calista's voice carried a faint echo through the empty hall as she signaled with one hand.
No further words were needed. The team immediately spread out.
Mike and Carver took point, one on the left and one on the right, their muzzles trained on the side corridors and any possible threats above.
Bossie and Turner covered the rear. Michonne and Danny protected the flanks, while Daryl and Shane stayed in the middle of the formation.
Leah signaled for Lorenzo to stay beside Calista, keeping one eye on him while her gaze swept warily over their surroundings.
They advanced slowly along the main path through the central hall.
It was too quiet.
Aside from their footsteps, there was only the faintest hum of the ventilation system.
"Damn. This place is huge," Turner whispered, breaking the suffocating silence.
His headlamp swept over a row of server racks with dormant indicator lights flickering. "Looks even crazier than the main hall at Rock Fortress."
Leah did not look back. "It's too clean in here."
It was.
There was no debris on the floor, no bodies, not even much heavy dust.
It was as if the place had been carefully cleaned just before the disaster, and then time had frozen.
But as the team moved deeper in, that order began to break apart.
A stack of scattered documents lay at a corner, splattered with blood that had long since turned brown.
Here and there, deep scratch marks could be seen on the walls, along with more dried, blackened bloody handprints.
"The disaster happened suddenly." Bossie crouched down and rubbed the dried blood on the papers between his fingers. "No signs of a large-scale battle. Looks more like... an internal breakdown."
Calista's heart sank.
An internal breakdown usually meant a virus leak or test subjects going out of control.
They tried pushing open several doors labeled "Archives" and "Primary Analysis Room." Most were locked tight. The few that could be opened were either empty or held only old computers that would not start.
Everything required clearance, higher clearance.
At the CDC in Atlanta, Dr. Jenner was still alive. Here, there was no one.
Just as the team passed a fork and prepared to explore the laboratory area on the left, a faint sound came from a passage on the right, where several large metal cargo containers were stacked.
"Click."
It sounded like bones scraping together.
Everyone's weapons snapped toward the source of the noise.
Deep in the shadows of the cargo containers, a figure staggered to its feet.
It wore a white researcher's uniform, now filthy beyond recognition. Half its cheek was missing, exposing a pale cheekbone and a hollow eye socket.
It was a walker.
Then came a second, a third... five in total, shuffling out from a half-open door behind the containers.
They all wore similar uniforms. They had once been researchers here.
"Keep your distance. Use melee weapons. Don't draw more of them," Calista ordered calmly.
Running into walkers was nothing unusual in the apocalypse, but in this strange place, their first encounter still set everyone's nerves on edge.
"You're up, archer, katana woman." Carver dropped his usual cynical look and gestured to Daryl and Michonne, while he and Turner kept watch in the other directions.
Daryl said nothing. He raised his crossbow steadily.
"Whoosh!"
A crossbow bolt cut through the air and buried itself cleanly in the eye socket of the lead walker. It dropped on the spot.
Almost the same instant the bolt hit, Michonne moved.
Her katana came out of its sheath in a cold arc of light. The blade swept past, and two heads left their necks almost at the same time, rolling across the floor as black blood splattered over the cargo containers.
Michonne moved lightly, closing in on the other two in an instant. The blade flashed again, and both kills were clean and decisive.
The last walker snarled and lunged at Calista, who seemed to be alone.
Calista's eyes turned cold. Instead of retreating, she stepped forward. As she turned sideways to avoid its grasp, the dagger in her hand drove upward from below, stabbing through the walker's jaw until the tip emerged from the top of its skull.
She twisted hard, pulled the dagger free, and the walker collapsed limply to the floor.
The fight was over in a dozen seconds. Five corpses lay on the ground, and the hall returned to dead silence, with only the thicker smell of blood spreading through the air.
"Done." Michonne flicked the foul blood from her blade and sheathed it.
"Well done." Leah nodded in approval, her gaze passing over Calista as well, acknowledging the clean, decisive way she had handled herself.
Daryl stepped forward in silence and retrieved his crossbow bolt.
Even though they had dealt with the walkers easily, no one relaxed.
The appearance of walkers proved this place was no safe haven. Unknown threats could be hiding behind the next door.