Tunnels 02, Deeper

light.
    They found themselves in a big white room.
    It was startling.
    There was absolute calm.
    It was completely at odds with everything else Cal had seen in the Bunker: perfectly clean, with a pristine white-tiled floor and newly whitewashed ceiling, down the middle of which a long line of luminescent orbs were suspended.
    Along both sides of the room were polished iron doors; Elliott had already gone up to the nearest of these and was peering through the glass inspection window set into it. Then she moved to the next one. The doors all had large check marks daubed on them in black paint, applied so thickly it had run over the buffed metal.
    "I can see bodies," she said. "So this is the quarantine area."
    It was more than just bodies . As Cal went to see for himself, there were two -- in some cells three -- corpses stretched out on the floor. It was obvious they'd been dead for some time, as they'd already begun to decay. A clear, gelatinous fluid, flecked with yellow and red, had leaked from them and pooled on the stark white tiles.
    "Some of them look like Colonists," Cal said, noticing what they were wearing.
    "And some were renegades," Elliott said in a strained voice.
    "Who did this? What killed them?" Cal asked.
    "Styx," she replied.
    The mention of that name instantly brought him back to the seriousness of their situation, and he began to panic.
    "We don't have time for this!" he shouted, trying to steer her back toward the door.
    "No, wait," she said. She was frowning at him but not pushing him away.
    "We can't mess around here! They'll be following..." he gasped.
    "No, this is important. These cells have been sealed!" Elliott said, examining the edges of the door. Like all the others, it had thick new welds on all four sides, and no handle to open it. "Can't you see what this is, Cal? It's the Styx testing area we heard about -- they've been trying out some sort of bio-weapon here!"
    Cal was right behind Elliott as she reached the next cell, and he noticed its door didn't have a mark painted on it. As she looked in, a face jumped up at the window. The eyes were bloodshot and swollen. It was a man -- in a state of extreme panic. Angry red boils covered every inch of his skin and his cheeks were hollow, his face cadaverously thin. He was shouting something, but they couldn't hear so much as a whisper through the glass.
    He began to beat weakly on the window with both fists, but still there was no noise. He stopped, peering at them with his demented, darting eyes.
    "I know him," Elliott said hoarsely. "He's one of us."
    He was mouthing something, trying to communicate with her by emphasizing the words with his lips.
    It was meaningless to her.
    "Elliott!" Cal begged. "We have to leave!"
    She ran her fingers over a length of the weld that stretched unbroken around the edge of the door in a thick slug, wondering if she could somehow blow it open. But she knew they didn't have time to try. All she could do was give the man a helpless shrug.
    "Let's go," Cal shouted, then screamed, "now!"
    "OK," she agreed, swiveling on her heels to run back to the door through which they'd entered.
    They were immediately plunged back into the darkened world of the Bunker, the dust-laden air swirling around them. As their eyes readjusted from the clinical brightness of the strange room, they continued down the corridor in the direction she'd originally been taking them.
    "Keep close," Elliott whispered as they crept along.
    After a short distance, she came to a halt.
    "Come on, come on! Which way?" Cal heard her mutter urgently to herself. "Has to be down here," she decided.
    Several corridors later, they entered a small hallway from which two doorways led off. She went from one to the other, then paused between the two, shutting her eyes.
    By this point, Cal had lost all faith in her ability to get them to safety. But before he could express his doubt, there was a clanging from nearby. A door was being battered down -- the Limiters were closing in.
    Elliott's eyes flicked open.
    "Got it!" she shouted, choosing which doorway to take. We're in the home stretch now!"
    At the end of a sequence of lefts and rights, they were slipping and sliding down the stairs into the submerged basement again. This time Cal had absolutely no qualms about lowering himself into the stagnant water and was clambering up the stairs on the other side in seconds flat. Elliott had held back to set a sizable charge on the opposite stairway just above the