I looked at the dark opening behind the bookshelf.

It looked like a throat waiting to swallow me.

“Let’s go,” I said.

I helped Mara up again, and we followed my father down a steep flight of concrete stairs.

The air grew colder, smelling of concrete dust and ozone.

At the bottom of the stairs was a small bunker, crowded with old computer monitors and server racks.

It looked like a command center from the late nineties.

A single green terminal screen flickered in the center of the room.

“I kept the power running on a closed generator loop,” Raymond said, flipping a series of switches.

The servers hummed to life, their cooling fans whining in the damp air.

He slotted the silver thumb drive into a port on the side of the terminal.

The green screen flashed, rows of code scrolling down at high speed.

A prompt appeared in the center of the screen: *INPUT ACCESS KEY.*

Raymond turned to me, his face pale under the fluorescent lights.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“Just do it,” I said, my heart hammering against my ribs.