" 'Ka," Elgars mouthed, lowering her hands. "N'd t' ge' ou' o' D'ge."

A few turns, a short secondary corridor and they were back in well-maintained corridors as if the encounter had never taken place. These corridors were, for the most part, not crowded. The one exception was an open area where at least four hundred people, mostly older but with a scattering of younger women and children, sat on metal chairs playing board games, talking and sipping drinks. One end of the area was an elaborate playground, like hell's own hamster trail. It was mainly around this centerpiece that the children ran screaming happily.

Wendy didn't even pause, continuing her unerring navigation towards their eventual goal.

"We're almost there," she said, taking another up escalator. "This place is laid out really logically. Once you get used to it you can find anything. All the security stuff is up and towards the main entrance which is on the inner corner of A."

Elgars pointed to a large red box on the wall of the corridor. It was the second one that they had passed. It was marked in a similar manner to the emergency packs in the rooms, but had a large sign "For ER Personnel only." And it apparently hadn't been looted.

"It's an attack pack," Wendy said. "There is one in each subsector, located at the subsector's 4/4/4 point; that's short for the middle of the subsector. It's got basic rescue and fire gear in case of an emergency. There's some class B breath packs, a trauma kit including foldable stretcher, a defib kit, firefighting gear and an entry kit. They can only be opened by qualified emergency/rescue personnel; there's a palm print scanner on them. I can get one open; I'm in the fire/rescue reserve force. I'm hoping to get on a regular crew soon, if I can pass the Physical Performance Eval."

Elgars pointed to the sprinklers on the ceiling. "F'r'?"

"Yeah, they're for fire suppression," Wendy agreed. "And some of the areas that have a lot of computer equipment are Halon fed. But even with them, there's the possibility of a large breakout. And if a big fire breaks out, we're screwed. This thing is like a ship; you have to kill the fire before it kills you. The alternative is going to the surface, and if we wanted to be up there, we wouldn't be stuck down here."

"Wur ahh . . . are we?" Elgars asked gesturing around. She apparently had decided to ignore the earlier adventure.

"You mean in the world?" Wendy responded. "They didn't tell you?"

"Nuu . . ." the captain said. "Ne'er ask . . ."

"Didn't want to ask the shrinks, huh?" Wendy said, taking another turn. This corridor was less well lit and appeared to be unused. The doors along both sides all showed the red panel of being locked. "We're in the mountains of North Carolina. Does that mean anything to you?"

"Nuuu . . ." Elgars said with a shrug then frowned. "S . . . saw a m . . . map. A . . . Ash . . ."

"Not near Asheville," Wendy said with a snort. "It's a long story."

"Tell."

Wendy shrugged. "When the Posleen dropped on . . . Fredericksburg," Wendy said with only a slight catch in her voice over the destruction of her hometown, "most of the Sub-Urbs weren't ready for people to move in. But there were nearly two million refugees from Northern Virginia. Some of them could go back but . . . well most of F'Burg was just gone. I mean, between the battleships and the fighting and the Bomb it had been smashed flat. And we were going to have to move out soon because the Posleen were just coming back. And most of the survivors were . . . well . . . not in the greatest shape. . . .

"Anyway, this was the only Urb that was almost finished on the East Coast. It was the first one started; the local congressional representative had managed to wrangle getting it placed in his district even though it's in a really stupid spot."

Elgars made another sound and Wendy grimaced.

"Well, first of all, all the other Urbs are placed near interstates, usually near existing cities. Asheville has two really huge ones and they're both full. But we're near a place called Franklin. It's just a little town in southern North Carolina, a dot on the map. The only reason we're here is because of the congressman; he'd been in Congress for just about forever and was the committee chairman for the procurement process. So this was where the first Sub-Urb went.

"Supplying us, what little supplies we get, is a real pain because the trucks have to compete with the supplies for the corps that's defending Rabun Gap. And the corps is practically on top of us; their main rear area supply point is Franklin, so at first we had all sorts of trouble. There's a Kipling poem that points out that soldiers aren't 'plaster saints.' Mix a corps of soldiers with an underground city full of women and things got . . . bad for a while. So now they stay out there and we stay in here and almost everybody's happy."

She shook her head after a moment. "We're just about the only Sub-Urb that has that problem, too. You see, we're just about the closest Urb to a defense line. I mean, there are a couple of others that are this close and then there was the Rochester Urb . . ." She paused and shuddered.

"Ba . . . ?" Elgars asked.

"Yeah," Wendy said quietly. "Worse than F'Burg really. The Posleen got into the Urb and after that there just wasn't anything to do. There's really only one way in and out. The defenders put up a good fight, or so we hear. There . . . weren't any survivors."

"Urgh . . ."

"Yeah," Wendy said. "That's why whenever the news mentions fighting around Rabun Gap we sort of tense up. If the Posleen come through there's not much we're going to be able to do."

Elgars just nodded and kept looking around. Like Wendy, most of the people were poorly dressed. The exception were one or two teenage females who were wearing flashy shorts and midriff tops. The clothing was clearly new, but the style was . . . different from the rest of the inhabitants.

Wendy noted her glances and frowned. "Corps whores," she whispered.

"Whuh?"

Wendy shrugged again. "Everybody finds their niche here. Some of them turn into drones, some of them decide to have some fun running the corridors and acting like they're bad. Others . . . find a party. The soldiers up top are restricted from coming down here; there were just . . . too many problems when they had unrestricted access." She frowned and it was apparent that there was a wealth of stories in that simple sentence. "So after a while the head of security and the corps commander reached an agreement and now the soldiers don't come down here. That doesn't mean we're restricted from leaving. So some of the girls, women too . . . ply a very old trade on the surface."

"I do' . . . n'er'stan'," Elgars tried to enunciate.

Wendy looked at her with an arched eyebrow. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

"Nu."

Wendy sighed and hitched the bag higher. "They trade sex for money, Captain. And goods. Like better clothes and food than you can get down here. And electronics gear: that's almost nonexistent these days."

Elgars looked around at the high plastic walls and the unending corridors. She thought about being stuck in here for years and shook her head. "So?"

Wendy looked at her again and shook her head. "Never mind. It would take too long to explain why people find that bad."

The captain nodded as they turned into a door marked "S&A Securities." There was a small alcove on the far side and another door which was locked.

Wendy pressed a buzzer and looked up at a security camera. "Lemme in, David, I bring a visitor."

"You're carrying, honey. I'm surprised you made it." The deep voice came from a speaker almost directly overhead as the door buzzed.

"I just walked around all the detectors," Wendy said as she entered the sparse room beyond. "And it was a good thing I was."