Justin - Chapter Eleven
by Machelli
He was in a completely new room! The walls were not made of rippled cement but instead were bright red versions of the halls in the main lobby of the Plant. A plentiful variety of machines spread out before him, all bathed in the same ghostly, red light emanating from the walls, ceiling, and floor.
Justin stepped out of the elevator and, upon turning around to look back at it, realized that the "top" had come off of it. It had been left, attached to the ground of the first floor. In its place was the real top to the cylinder, just as shiny and reflective as the rest of it.
Justin turned back around and walked toward the nearest machine to him, another conveyor belt. He put the hand icon on the lever and, having the process down pat by now, pushed it forward and activated the device.
As before, tubes of various sizes proceeded to roll down the belt. But there was something different about these. They had holes in neat lines all around them.
Justin walked over to another, box-shaped machine and, upon pressing the button on its side, was surprised when small triangular pieces of metal started to drop out of it and into a pan. Justin looked down and grasped one with the hand icon. Pressing the back arrow, he brought it as close to him as possible and realized what it was.
A sight!
To a gun!
So this was where the weapons were made! But why hadn't the East American investigators noticed it?
Suddenly, a thought struck Justin. He clicked on the X-light and swept the beam around the room. Just as he had expected, the circle did not penetrate the red walls but shown through the equipment.
So that was why they never found the Plant's basement. If the East Americans had a tool similar to Justin's X-light and had used it while on the top floor, they would have only seen the mass of machinery below them and no further.
Justin was beginning to understand. The floor that was completely mechanized and produced the sheet metal was merely a decoy level, sandwiched between the upper floor and the basement. If someone looked through the floor of the upper level, that is all they would see because the walls of the basement resisted the penetrative rays of the X-light.
But Justin could see that the corkscrew that brought the sheet metal up from the middle level had extended all the way down to the floor on which he now stood.
Why?
Was it part of the original design of the building? After all, it used to be a mining facility. Or maybe people on this floor used it to send large items up to the top floor. It was certainly big enough to carry any piece of machinery in the basement.
All these thoughts were lost as Justin remembered the true reason why he was on the computer in the first place.
I have to find a tunnel!
Justin looked up and down the toolbar on the left side of his screen. Over an icon of a map were the words "floor-plan overlay". He clicked on it.
In the upper right hand corner of the computer screen, a small map appeared. A tiny, green dot flashed inches from a circle that Justin took to be the elevator, which meant that the flashing dot was him.
He moved forward and, according to his prediction, the green point slowly moved away from the circle.
As Justin looked at the map, he realized that there were quite a few passageways branching off of it. Could these be the tunnels that Sam had been looking for?
Justin turned around to see the opening of the first corridor.
There wasn't one.
No door marked the beginning of what should have been a way out of the basement.
Perhaps it's a trap door, thought Justin.
So he walked toward the wall, expecting to pass through it as he had done countless times before.
But he didn't.
The camera simply stopped once it had gotten as close to the wall as possible.
"What?" Justin whispered to himself.
Why hadn't it worked?
Perhaps the door was locked and a button needed to be pressed to open it. That's why he hadn't been able to walk through the second door upstairs. But if the door was opened by a button then it would be too easy to use and would surely not lead outside. Justin was pretty sure that his father would not allow an escape route to be so easily accessible.
So he moved on to the next tunnel and experienced similar results. Justin went all the way down the wall, bumping into it five times altogether. Frustrated, Justin began walking toward the second to last tunnel, wondering if any of the passageways on the map actually existed. Perhaps they had all been filled in and there wasn't a way out.
But to Justin's surprise, he walked right through the wall.
He was now in utter darkness. Justin looked at the toolbar on the screen and discovered that, amazingly, there was a flashlight icon. Justin clicked on it and the tunnel was immediately illuminated at least ten feet in every direction.
That's quite the flashlight, Justin thought.
He pressed the right arrow of the second set and the camera slowly turned around in a circle. As far as Justin could tell, he was in a long, dirty, damp tunnel that extended far beyond the reach of his light. And so, hoping that the tunnel led out of the Plant, Justin trekked forward.
The tunnel immediately turned right and continued straight ahead for some time before bending left again in a direction that Justin assumed was away from the wall through which he had entered.
After a short distance, he came upon a rusted metal door that seemed to belong more on a vault than under ground. It was bulbous and circular and on the front was some sort of dial that resembled an old, old-fashioned steering wheel for a boat. Under the wheel was a small slot, in which were the words "door un-locked"
Justin grasped the wheel, pulled backward and, sure enough, the door swung open and exposed the rest of the cavernous passageway. He walked forward for a few steps and then turned and pulled the door shut behind him.
On this side, the door was not bulbous at all. It was flat but still a circular shape and, instead of wheel, a short, thick joystick-like pin stuck out of a long track in the middle of the door. Another small slot that read "door un-locked" was right below this.
Justin grabbed the pin and pushed it all the way to the left, producing a sluggish, whirring sound. Justin imagined that the noise was probably the wheel on the other side, rotating slowly.
Once the whirring stopped, the words "door un-locked" slid over to the left and were replaced by the words "door secured." At this point, the track took a downward dive toward the floor. Justin followed it with the thick joystick and, with a loud, gear-grinding scrape, "door secured" was replaced with "door locked".
Interesting.
So, thought Justin. Perhaps the push to the left spins the wheel and "secures" the door from being opened by anything but another person. After all, if someone was on the other side, all they would have to do is turn the wheel to the left to open it. But maybe when I pushed the pin toward the ground some sort of bar got pushed into the ground, which would lock the door to someone on the opposite side.
Justin turned around and continued down the gloomy passageway.
He had been walking for quite some time now. Every once and a while he would glance at his watch, wondering just where, exactly, his father was and when he would return. Just then, Justin noticed that, not too far up ahead, the tunnel bent steeply upward. A rusted, dangerous looking ladder led a short ways up to another door. He climbed up and, after turning the wheel (which had been secured) Justin pushed on the vault-like door and it opened with a ripping sound of grass and earth. Apparently, the passageway had spent so many years in disuse that grass had grown over the exit.
Sun light streamed in through the widening doorway and illuminated the tunnel far better than Justin's flashlight had. He clicked it off and climbed out of the tunnel, through the doorway and beheld the end of his quest.
Green, grass-laden fields rolled away from him and met the thick forest that Justin had seen from his father's lawn. He turned around and, as he had expected, saw his father's mansion-like house in the distance.
This was better than Justin could have hoped for. The tunnel led out of the Plant and the nearby woods served as a readily available refuge. It was perfect!
Justin exited out of the "Plant walk-through" program and opened up his e-mail, hoping that if his father did return soon, he would find his son doing what he said he was going to do.
There was one message in Justin's e-mail bin. It was from Jeff but it bore no title subject. Justin opened it and began reading what his friend had written.
Dear Justin, It read. I got your e-mail and, to answer your questions, I'm fine, I got put on the Boys A baseball team, and, as my mom would say, my grades have been "acceptable". This year has been okay so far but not as fun since you moved. I hope you're enjoying yourself.
Your friend,
Jeff.
P.S. Please don't write back. My mom doesn't think I should talk to you anymore.
Justin sat back, stunned.
Why?
Why would his best friend's mother forbid Jeff from talking to him? Was it because of the stress between the Americas?
Justin looked back at the computer screen, at the simple, harsh words near the bottom.
P.S. Please don't write back. My mom doesn't think I should talk to you anymore.
And above that. .
Your friend,
Jeff.
Suddenly, Justin became angry with Jeff, his mom, and just about the whole World in general.
How could he do this!? Justin's mind roared. How could he sever a friendship so easily!?
Justin had been looking forward to Jeff's reply for quite a few days and to finally be confronted with this. .
He just couldn't fathom it.
Suddenly, from the turbulent ocean of Justin's angry and confused mind, a purely evil thought surfaced.
Is thiswhy my father had smiled?
Had he read it beforehand and knew it would upset me? I wouldn't put it past him!
But, as he thought things over he realized that the idea was nonsense. While his father may not be particularly nice, Justin couldn't believe that he would be the type of person to smile at other people's misfortunes.
Drake, on the other hand. . .
Justin shivered. Just the thought of that man made him feel uneasy.
Slowly, almost regretfully, Justin deleted the message and then exited out of the e-mail application. He checked his watch.
Six o'clock. Time to go.
He stood up, pushed in the chair to the computer table and somberly walked out of his father's office.
Authors deserve your feedback. It's the only payment they get. If you go to the top of the page you will find the author's name. Click that and you can email the author easily.* Please take a few moments, if you liked the story, to say so.
[For those who use webmail, or whose regular email client opens when they want to use webmail instead: Please right click the author's name. A menu will open in which you can copy the email address (it goes directly to your clipboard without having the courtesy of mentioning that to you) to paste into your webmail system (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo etc). Each browser is subtly different, each Webmail system is different, or we'd give fuller instructions here. We trust you to know how to use your own system. Note: If the email address pastes or arrives with %40 in the middle, replace that weird set of characters with an @ sign.]
* Some browsers may require a right click instead
