The rest period was nearly over.
The team members in the monitoring room had finished checking their equipment. Their eyes repeatedly drifted toward the two commanders in the corner as they waited for new orders.
Calista leaned against the main console, tapping its edge with one finger.
"These surveillance cameras might still work," she suddenly said.
Leah raised an eyebrow and looked toward Honeywell, who was curled up in a corner resting.
"Honeywell." Calista walked over and crouched in front of him, bringing her eyes level with his. "Focus and think carefully.
"The backup power supply for this monitoring room operates independently of the main grid.
"You know where it is, don't you? You were Singularity Polymers' security consultant."
Honeywell blinked. He looked at Calista, then at the rows of dark surveillance screens. After a long moment, the memory finally came back to him.
"At the end of the corridor on the second basement level, there's a locked gray steel door..."
The information was vague, but it was enough.
Calista immediately stood. "Carver, Mike, Michonne. Take Honeywell and find it. Get the backup power running, and be careful."
Honeywell was helped to his feet and followed the other three out of the monitoring room.
The stairwell leading to the second basement level was cluttered with debris. Following Honeywell's directions, they found a concealed maintenance passage.
The passage was narrow, with a low ceiling. Sure enough, a heavy gray steel door stood at the far end, secured with an old-fashioned padlock.
Mike took out his tools and prepared to pick the lock.
The moment he gripped it, slow scratching and rasping snarls sounded from the other side of the door.
Carver immediately drew his axe. Michonne pressed herself against the wall beside the door and tightened her grip on her katana.
Honeywell recoiled in fright, but Mike grabbed him and held him in place.
"Walkers," Carver whispered, his voice tense. "They're not making much noise. There probably aren't many."
Mike worked faster.
Click.
The lock opened.
Carver kicked the door wide, and the beams from their headlamps flooded the backup power room.
Two ragged walkers staggered toward them, drawn by the presence of the living.
Employee badges from the chemical plant still hung from their clothes. Most of their faces had rotted away, and their movements were sluggish. They were ordinary walkers.
Judging from their condition, they had probably been trapped here during the early days of the apocalypse. By sheer chance, they had escaped the Black Fire mutants that later overran the facility, only to starve to death, turn, and become prisoners wandering this room.
Ordinary walkers posed no threat to them.
Carver buried his axe in one walker's temple, while Michonne drove her katana precisely through the second one's eye socket.
The brief encounter ended with both walkers collapsing motionless to the floor.
Honeywell leaned against the wall, pale and breathing heavily.
Carver nudged one of the bodies with his boot to make sure it would not move again, then turned toward the backup generator.
"This thing's ancient," Mike said, shining his flashlight across the faded nameplate on its casing. "Let's hope it hasn't completely rusted through."
"Give it a try," Michonne said calmly as she wiped the grime from her katana on a walker's clothes.
Carver wasted no time. He found the starter cord, took a deep breath, and yanked it hard.
"Cough... Clack, clack, clack... Hum..."
The generator made a series of piercing noises and shook violently. Just when they thought it was about to stall, the engine settled into a low, steady rumble.
Several important green lights illuminated on the control panel.
"Ha! We've got something!" Carver grinned.
Almost simultaneously, the fluorescent tubes overhead flickered violently, buzzing as electricity surged through them. Then they stabilized, flooding the room with light and exposing every corner.
Back in the monitoring room, more than ten minutes of anxious waiting finally came to an end.
One of the larger screens above the main console suddenly flickered and displayed a blurry black-and-white image.
It showed what appeared to be an empty corridor. The lighting was dim, but the scene was recognizable.
The power was back, and so were their eyes.
"Holy shit!" Turner had been resting with his feet up. The sudden activity startled him so badly that he nearly sprang out of his chair.
"Carver and the others did it!" Bossie exclaimed. "The signal's terrible and the coverage is limited, but at least the internal surveillance system in this section is responding."
Rows of buttons and indicator lights across the console began illuminating one after another, casting a faint blue-green glow.
The surveillance screen array covering most of the front wall crackled softly as static flickered across it.
More screens gradually came alive. Most remained dark, but seven or eight cameras began transmitting intermittent footage.
The team crowded around, holding their breath as they studied the images.
The chemical plant's maze-like interior appeared before them in a series of divided screens.
Most of the areas shown were deathly still.
As Calista scanned the footage, she suddenly straightened and locked her gaze on one screen.
"Holy shit," she muttered a second later.
A Predator was slowly moving down a corridor, leaving the floor coated in slime wherever it passed.
And it was not alone.
Several dark shapes flashed across another screen.
Calista quickly identified the areas shown in the footage. "The east corridor, the C-7 duct level, and the perimeter of the main reactor workshop. They're spread out, with no obvious destination. Are they patrolling, or searching?"
"Searching for what? Us?" Leah asked, her brow deeply furrowed.
"Not necessarily. They might be looking for Claw mutants." Calista's sharp gaze moved across the other screens.
She noticed that several routes leading to the emergency evacuation corridors had not yet been completely blocked by the creatures.
"Calista," Carver's slightly distorted voice came through the communicator. "The power's running. We have lights down here. What about you?"
"The surveillance system is back online," Calista replied, pressing the transmission button without taking her eyes off the screens. "Good work, Carver. But we don't have time to celebrate. We've got serious trouble. Head back the way you came immediately. Stay away from the east side."
"Copy."
Carver's response was brief and decisive.
Calista ended the transmission and turned toward the group gathered around the console.
"All right, everyone. We have our eyes back. Now we need to determine the approximate positions of those things. Check your equipment and your remaining oxygen levels. We may not have much time."
...
Carver and the other three soon returned to the monitoring room.
"Honeywell, come here," Calista called as she and Leah moved to the main console.
"Using the blueprints and logs you've seen, together with this surveillance footage, piece together the general layout of Lab D-7 and its connected areas. Make it as detailed as possible."
Honeywell swallowed, took an electronic pen, and began drawing on the tactical tablet Bossie handed him.
"We're currently at the junction between the secondary monitoring area and the sample preprocessing zone.
"This is the direction we came from. It connects to the outer buffer room and the top-level platform.
"The main laboratory extends deeper into the facility. It's divided into the core experimental zone, the data analysis hub, the High-Risk Sample Repository, the power station, and the special waste disposal corridor..."
As he drew and explained, the lines remained simple, but the outline of a vast, tiered, modular laboratory complex gradually emerged.