The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

whose bottom might be dozens of feet further below, and whose width and length he couldn’t determine.
    He stared a moment longer, the red glow almost hypnotizing at this range. It saturated the bottom walkway and the steps there, and every visible inch of whatever lay beneath it all.
    Travis looked up and saw Dyer gazing down at it too. Then the man trailed his eyes upward until he was craning his neck to stare at the top two thirds of the shaft, rearing above them like a chimney seen from deep inside. Travis got the impression that Dyer was looking at it all for the first time.
    “You came in through the other access,” Travis said.
    Dyer nodded, at last leveling his gaze and turning to face the group. “I only got here half an hour ago. I was in Barbados with my wife and daughter when I got the news last night.”
    “How did you know the door combination?” Paige said.
    “Garner gave it to me, just after he took office again last year. He told me—” He cut himself off, looking puzzled about something. Travis realized the same puzzlement had been there, under the surface, from the moment Dyer had stepped out of the dark. The man looked from one of them to the other. At last he said, “Are you guys it? None of the others made it?”
    “Others?” Travis said.
    Dyer nodded. “This mine is the rally point. Everyone still alive is supposed to show up here.”
    Travis thought of the people who’d been killed in unison with Garner, all over the country. The power players Peter had met with, all those years ago.
    Still looking confused, Dyer said, “No offense, but I didn’t think you guys were part of the group. You’d be just about the last people I’d expect to meet in this place. How did you get the combination?”
    Travis met Paige’s and Bethany’s eyes. Their bafflement matched his own. Clearly Dyer knew a lot more than the three of them did—he’d learned it directly from Garner.
    Travis looked at Dyer again. The man stared and waited for the answer.
    “We’re honestly not sure how we got the combo,” Travis said. “We think Breach technology was involved, but if so, it was a kind we’ve never heard of.” He shook his head. “Look, you seem to have the whole picture of this thing. We’ve been piecing it together slapshot since last night, and we’re missing big chunks of it. If you know it all, please tell us.”
    Dyer frowned. He seemed to struggle with some deep indecision. “This is all happening wrong,” he said. “It’s not supposed to be like this.”
    “Tell us what it is supposed to be like,” Paige said.
    For a moment Dyer just stood there. He looked troubled by the idea he needed to express. Then he said, “The whole point is not to tell you. That’s what it’s supposed to be like. No current member of Tangent is supposed to know anything. Not for a few years yet.”
    Travis found himself getting tired of the confusion. “You’re right,” he said. “It is all happening wrong—the people you expected aren’t here. But we are. I assume your purpose is the same as ours.” He nodded over the rail behind him. “To do whatever can be done about the Stargazer.”
    Dyer looked more thrown by that than anything so far. “That must be an old nickname for it. Whatever you want to call it, I don’t think much can be done. Just management, like Allen Raines was doing.”
    “You’re not here to stop it?” Paige said.
    Dyer shook his head.
    “What about the deadline?” Bethany said. “A little over six hours from now.”
    “That’s the deadline,” Dyer said, “but it has nothing to do with what’s in this mine.”
    Paige looked frustrated. “Just tell us everything. We already know the basics. We know Ruben Ward got instructions from the Breach in 1978. We know he spent that summer carrying them out. We know my father picked up on it later, and the Scalar investigation spent six years following Ward’s trail. Which led here, to whatever Ward created in this mine. So tell us the rest. Tell us what needs to be done, and we’ll help you do it.”
    Dyer stared at her. His expression went almost blank, as if his thoughts had turned inward to process what he’d just heard.
    “You’ve got the first few points right,” he said. “The rest is way off. Ward didn’t create anything in this place, and the Scalar investigation never picked up his trail. For all practical purposes, he didn’t leave one.”
    Travis remembered their conversation on the Coast