There was very little technology available to shovelers. Cole had come across a few screens here and there, and an occasional intercom, or other strange device, but the top room looked wholly unfamiliar to him. Other than nobody being present, it was like peering into an alien zoo.
Monitors as wide as the wall were lit up with graphs and charts and video feeds of the tunnels. Smaller monitors dangled in front of the larger ones containing information Cole couldn’t decipher. The desks were angled, covered in screens of their own, and letters and numbers were projected onto the open space where there were no screens. The chairs were on tracks and moved automatically between desks at some set interval Cole couldn’t grasp. Wires ran along the floor, up the walls, and drooped from the ceiling, grazing the top of his head as he examined the room. It was a dizzying display of flashing lights, rotating gizmos, and swirling screens and chairs. Cole sat in one of the only non-moving chairs and rubbed his temples. Whether it was the stimulation of the top room, oxygen deficiency from climbing up here, or the chaos of the day, he wasn’t sure, but he had to sit and get his head right.
“What are you doing?” Zach asked.
Root was popping open a floorboard and halfway in when he stopped. “Checking out the connection to the main stack. It wasn’t hooked up last time.”
“I doubt that would have changed,” Zach said. “That’s the whole reason we’re here, right?”
“Yea, but I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything last time.” Root slipped underneath the floor completely, but his voice still echoed through the hole he had left. “I want to make sure I wasn’t crazy.”
“Oh now you tell us?” Zach said. He turned to Cole. “Can you believe this guy?”
Still rubbing his forehead, Cole just groaned.
“You alright, man?”
“Yeah,” Cole said. “I’ll be fine. I just don’t understand.” He sighed. “I thought we’d at least get some answers here.”
“What I’m starting to realize is that nobody is going to just straight up tell us what’s going on.”
“Well, yeah. But I’d at least like to see someone to get a chance to ask!” Cole stood. “How the hell is there just nobody here?”
“If Root’s right, they wouldn’t have a reason to be here, right?”
“I guess…” Cole looked around the room. “But these monitors,” he walked up and pointed to one of the giant walls. “They display stuff, see?” The monitor switched to a view of the Assignments Room, which was currently empty. “So they must have some reason to be watching this. Or, at least, they did." He paced around a desk. “Why would they abandon it?”
Zach, leaning against a wall/monitor, held his hands out. “Beats me.”
“Hey guys,” Root called out from somewhere underneath them. “I was right. Ain’t nothing connected down here. Just a big ball of wires, but the main stack isn’t hooked up.”
“Just like last time?” Cole asked.
“Just like last time,” Root repeated. There were some shuffling noises from below, and then Root appeared at the hole and jumped up onto the floor. “Guess I wasn’t crazy.”
“I don’t know if that proves it…” Zach said.
Root slammed his fist into Zach’s shoulder. “I was like, 99% sure, but you know.”
Cole cleared his throat. “So we already knew it wasn’t connected to the stack, so the machine doesn’t do anything.” Both Zach and Root nodded in unison. “But why would nobody be here? Why aren’t they keeping up the farce anymore?” Both men shook their heads in unison, and Cole started pacing again. “It must be related to everything that’s happening, right? The attack, the lack of assignments, the moving of the barracks…” Cole kept pacing, lost in thought, as Zach and Root’s attention turned to the monitors.
“Wait a minute,” Zach said, scampering over to one of the monitors. “These images,” he said, pointing to a small monitor above his head. “They’re repeating themselves. Watch…” As the monitor near him switched images, he shuffled to another screen across the room, and as he got there, the same image flashed on screen. “Then wait…” He tapped his finger on the screen, and as it changed, followed the image to another monitor a few feet away. “It’s a cycle, they just move between screens.”
“They’re repeating?” Cole asked.
“Kind of.” Zach moved back to one of the screens on the desk. “Except this one,” he said. Cole and Root moved in behind him. “I thought it was random, too, but it’s not the same. The images on this desk are only on this desk.”
“What’s the image? What are we looking at?”
“That’s just the thing,” Zach said. “I don’t recognize this space.”
“What do you mean?” Root asked.
“I’ve been lots of places, but this,” he pointed at the screen. “This doesn’t look like any of them. Think about it. The tunnels, the barracks, the machine rooms, town hall. Nothing, right?”
Cole leaned in to examine the image. It shifted again, to a different angle, but it was still the same location. He looked for identifying clues, or marks, or anything, but Zach was right. This was as unfamiliar to him as the top room. He inched closer, and just as he was about to turn away, a face walked into view.
It was a face unlike any other he had seen before.